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Informing public access to peer reviewed scholarly publications and data resulting from publicly funded research
The US government (OSTP) has recently issued Requests for Information on Open Access to data resulting from publicly funded research. The deadline for responding to the RFI has been extended to January 12.
Detailed responses are openly available for collaborative editing and signing, here:
For peer reviewed scholarly publications – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vEcWqAz6bwIIR6qQqWZYc8iUBrOpJ9NrvC9HiiQMc2Y/edit?hl=en_US
Please take time to respond, either via the above responses or directly to the OSTP.
Consider the gold rush upon which expanding colonisation of America so successfully relied; why did people care about gold that much? why did they go to such great lengths to traverse the wilds and dig it up, risking or losing their lives in the process? Of course, the answer is because it was highly valued – and the reason it was so highly valued was precisely because it is so hard and risky to come by.
Controlling access to a resource is a common way to generate profit; because gold is inherently hard to access, it is a good basis for an economy. Similarly, all sorts of materials that are found to have desirable properties become valuable, usually as a function of their desirability in relation to accessibility.
Digital artefacts, however, are very easy to copy and distribute. In cases where an industry has grown up around the distribution of a product that has become digitally easy to copy and share, efforts have been made to artificially maintain that difficulty via the application of the concept of digital piracy.
If gold were easy to find, easy to copy, easy to distribute – would it help if we made it poisonous?
Encumbering digital artefacts with artificial accessibility restrictions does not make them hard to find, copy, or distribute – it just makes them needlessly complicated.
The traditional increase desirability / decrease accessibility paradigm does not readily apply to digital artefacts. Fortunately, the problem of profiting from them has been solved, and solved often; they are regularly purchased or consumed via profitable services on the basis of convenience or improved user experience. In such cases, open access to a resource facilitates building a useful (or at least desirable or fashionable) service – consider Google, Facebook, Youtube, Spotify.
The case of publicly funded scholarly output is further complicated by the fact that accessibility is inherent to desirability – the point is to build on what we learn, and we cannot do that if we cannot access it. Achieving anything with these artefacts – discovering, sharing, learning, communicating, archiving, profiting – is best done in the ideal environment where they are easy to find, copy, distribute – and are not poisonous.
We need open access, not restricted access.
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Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica
Print version ISSN 0102-7972
REGO, Arménio; TAVARES, Aida Isabel; PINA E CUNHA, Miguel and CARDOSO, Carlos Cabral. The motives of achievement, affiliation and power: post-graduation student's motivational profiles and it's relation with individual income. Psicol. Reflex. Crit. [online]. 2005, vol.18, n.2, pp. 225-236. ISSN 0102-7972. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0102-79722005000200011.
This research concerns the motives of achievement, affiliation and power. It aims: a) to show how the motives explain income of individuals; b) to test if the postgraduate students denote a motivational profile different from the one of the graduate students; c) to test if these profiles are similar to those extracted by Rego in Portuguese samples, in which the affiliation motive predominates. The sample comprises 314 postgraduate students and 280 graduate students. The motives were measured through a questionnaire previously developed and validated. The main findings are the following: a) income correlate positively with the power motive; b) the predictive power of motives to the income is lower than the one provided by the length of time after graduation; c) postgraduate students score higher than graduate students on the power and achievement motives; d) the profile of the sample is different from the one extracted from previous Portuguese samples, although it is not possible to know if this is due to the specificity of the sample or to some change in the Portuguese motivational profile.
Keywords : Motives; achievement; affiliation; power; individual income; academic achievement; motivational profile.
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What is the Shelton Leadership Challenge ?
The Shelton Leadership Challenge @ ECU is a six-day residential experience to help students expand their knowledge and skills of what it takes to be a leader. Students will participate in activities that will help them have a greater understanding for: Personal Leadership Assessment and Interpersonal Dynamics; Role of Values and Ethics in Leadership; Leadership Traits and Approaches; Teambuilding and Empowering Others; Civic and Social Responsibility; and Goal Setting.
Students also have the opportunity to participate in team building activities, low and high ropes courses, a service project, and fun night activities to help students get to know others participating in the program.
The Shelton Leadership Challenge @ ECU seeks youth who are going into the 9th to 12th grades (graduating seniors included) with a 3.0 grade point average (unweighted) or higher. Cost to attend the program is $575 for the week.
The Shelton Leadership Challenge @ ECU seeks to provide hands-on activities that assist youth to become more confident leaders back in their communities.
Expected outcomes of the Shelton Leadership Challenge @ ECU
- Model General Hugh Shelton's values-based leadership principles and traits inclusive of honesty, integrity, compassion, social responsibility and diversity.
- Assess baselined leadership skills and preferred practices using Kouzes and Posner's "Leadership Practices Inventory" and a 360 degree reflective model with the incorporation of assigned leadership roles and responsibilities during the week.
- Identify important leadership traits and competencies such as interpersonal skills, leadership styles, needs and skills assessment, teamwork, goal orientation, motivating others, personal presence and public speaking, ethical decision making and changing behaviors.
- Engage in a youth-adult mentoring civic engagement model to enhance appreciation for social responsibility and intergenerational respect.
- Develop and practice skills related to self and team reflection to better understand deeper meanings while relating current experiences to future applications with the ultimate intent of continuous personal-quality improvement.
- Prepare a leadership self-development plan for accomplishment of short-term objectives and life-long goals.
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PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The clear skies tonight will make excellent viewing conditions for a supermoon.
The last supermoon we had in the Philadelphia area was June 23, 2013.
A supermoon generally occurs maybe once a year. This year it will occur three times in the summer. One Friday tonight into Saturday, one again on August 10, and again on September 9.
It will be at its fullest point tomorrow morning around 7:25 a.m.
Supermoon basically means the moon’s orbit is at its closest point to the earth, making the moon appear larger than other full moons we see during the year.
Must Read Today’s Top Stories
- Officials Investigate Green Oily Substance In The Schuylkill River
- Unique Anti-Pull Dog Leash Invented By Local Man Selling On HSN
- Trending Social Media Dance-Off Originated In New Jersey
- Changes Expected In PPD Application Rules
- Free Wifi Coming To Philadelphia Neighborhood
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Although structurally similar to the Ibises, the Spoon-bills are at once distinguished by the form of the bill, this being nearly straight, flattened, narrow in the middle, then expanded out into a broad, spoon-shaped extremity. The head is partially or entirely bare, and the nostrils longitudinal in grooves, which extend with more or less distinctness to the apex of the bill. The wings are large,reaching to about the end of the tail, which is short, even, and composed of twelve broad, rounded feathers. The plumage (except in Ajaja ajaja) is white throughout, often with a beautiful rosy or crimson tinge, and during the breeding season several of the species are ornamented with crests, or bunches of plumes on the breast or fore neck.
> > The Spoonbills
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Alliance for Lupus Research (ALR) has been doing wonderful things over the past few years, and this SLEGEN project, short for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Genentics Consortium, is one of them.
This project, founded in 2005, conducted a three year study that has uncovered specific genes linked to lupus. The study was supported and funded by ALR - a $2.25 billion endeavor.
Researchers studied DNA from more than 6,700 women, including lupus patients, their families and unrelated controls.
After scanning the entire genome and 317,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), scientists found:
◦A total of four genes with robust evidence of genetic linkage to lupus - gene ITGAM, KIAA1542 and PXK - and at SNP rs10798269, a DNA unit not found within any known gene.
◦Nine other genes with promising evidence of linkage to the disease
Cool, huh? But maybe you're asking, so what happens next?
Thankfully, ALR answers that:
"Now that these genes have been identified, other scientists can seize upon these findings to start developing new strategies for prevention and therapy. These results represent a significant step toward the ALR mission of preventing, treating and curing lupus. Moving forward, SLEGEN updates will show how this study is driving further advancement in lupus treatment. The SLEGEN project opens the door to future lupus research funding that will help build on these groundbreaking results."
Super cool, right?
Copies of Despite Lupus have served as auction items at various ALR events over the years. If the results keep flowing, the copies will keep coming!
For the entire article, click here.
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BARCELONA.- The Periodico de Catalunya
, has published an article that states that the most famous photograph from the Spanish Civil War, the image of the militiaman capture by Robert Capa, was staged. The newspaper states that the militiaman did not die that way, nor that he did not die at Cerro Muriano, but 50 kilometers away from the place where the photo was taken.
It is the most reproduced photo of the Spanish Civil War. Its author: Robert Capa, master of photo-journalism and cofounder of Magnum. More than 70 years after that moment when a picture told the world about the Spanish conflict, an investigation attempts to prove that the image was set up.
From 1936 to 1939, he was in Spain, photographing the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, along with Gerda Taro, his companion and professional photography partner, and David Seymour.
Federico Borrell became famous when he fell wounded at Cerro Muriano, in Cordoba, during the combat that took place on September 5, 1936, almost two months after the war started. This is the official version of Capas photograph. A Spanish historian identified the dead soldier as Federico Borrell García, from Alcoi (Alicante). This identification has been disputed. Doubts had surfaced on this image and others from the same series some time ago, these having to do with the pose the soldier had, the chance that another soldier would also have died on the same spot in front of the camera, the presence of the photographer on the front line, etc.
According to the spanish newspaper El Periodico de Catalunya, the photo was taken near the town of Espejo, at 10 kilometres from Cerro Muriano, proving that the photo is a fake The newspaper assured that an investigation it has conducted confirms that Capa set the photo up. The change in location by 50 kilometers changes the whole story and definetely confirms that the sequence was prepared, and therefore the unidentified miltiaman faked his own death, said the Spanish newspaper, which started to investigate due to the exhibition that opened last week at Museo de Arte de Cataluña, in Barcelona.
Many of Capa's photographs of the Spanish Civil War were, for many decades, presumed lost, but surfaced in Mexico City in the late 1990s. While fleeing Europe in 1939, Capa had lost the collection, which over time came to be dubbed the "Mexican suitcase". Ownership of the collection was transferred to the Capa Estate, and in December, 2007, moved to the International Center of Photography, a museum founded by Capa's younger brother Cornell in Manhattan.
Robert Capa covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War. He documented the course of World War II in London, North Africa, Italy, the Battle of Normandy on Omaha Beach and the liberation of Paris. To Capa, technical considerations were secondary to catching a dramatic moment. His action photographs, such as those taken during the 1944 Normandy invasion, portray the violence of war with unique impact.
The International Center of Photography organized a travelling exhibition titled This Is War: Robert Capa at Work which reexamines Capa's innovations as a photojournalist in the 1930s and 1940s with vintage prints, contact sheets, caption sheets, handwritten observations, personal letters and original magazine layouts from the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. The exhibition has been on display at the Barbican Art Gallery and the International Center of Photography of Milan and is currently on display at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya until September 27, 2009. It will eventually move to the Nederlands Fotomuseum in October 10, 2009 until January 10, 2010.
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Our #ICAEWchartoftheweek this time is on the subject of public sector net investment. This is the government’s preferred measure of capital spending, including much needed investment in the UK’s economic and social infrastructure.
Over the years, the process for delivering capital expenditure in the public sector in the UK has had a pretty bad reputation.
The anecdote goes that the first quarter is spent arguing about budgets, in the second everyone goes on holiday, and it is only in the third quarter that programmes finally get up and running, before everything stops for the Christmas break. The final quarter is then a mad rush to spend the remaining budget before the end of the financial year.
Unfortunately, there does appear to be some support for this conjecture when we take a look at the actual numbers.
According to the provisional financial results for the year released last week, around 41% of public sector net investment in 2018-19 was incurred in the last quarter. £8.2bn or 19% was reported in the last month alone!
Brexit has been an added complication in this particular financial year, with the government’s no-deal preparations in the run up to the end of March involving additional capital spending. Despite this, March was the peak month last year, as it has been over the years.
This is a stubbornly consistent feature of the public finances in the UK, even after numerous attempts within government to improve capital budgeting and delivery processes. For example, departments are now able to carry over some of their capital budgets to future years, which in theory should reduce the incentive to spend every last penny of their allocation in-year. In practice, a great deal of activity seems to take place in March, while April and May appear to be much quieter.
Of course, it is possible that our concerns about the quality of government’s investment delivery process are not fully justified. There could after all be some very good reasons as to why the winter months are the best time for carrying out public capital works!
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As you get older, getting the right nutrition into your body can become an issue. Not only do you need fewer calories (so have less food allowance to work with if you don’t want to gain weight) but our body becomes less efficient at absorbing the nutrients too. Top that off with the fact that appetite can decrease and food doesn’t taste the way that it used to, it’s no wonder that so many older adults suffer from deficiencies and other food related issues. Here are just a few of the nutrients that you need to keep an eye on as you get older.
The risk of osteoporosis increases significantly as we age. The bones can lose tissue and density, making them more brittle and prone to fractures. This is extremely dangerous, and fractures can even lead to death in the hospital in older people. Consume more calcium, foods such as milk, kale, sardines, broccoli and leafy green vegetables are all a good source. You could also add a calcium supplement to your diet such as AlgaeCal. You can read AlgaeCal testimonials online if you’re unsure, or speak to your doctor.
While this is a supplement most taken by pregnant women and those of childbearing age. This is because it can prevent certain birth defects such as spina bifida. It might not be something that had even crossed your mind to take as an older adult. However, it’s so important. If you don’t eat a lot of fresh produce, your folate levels might be low, so try and up these if possible. Breakfast cereals are often fortified with folate these days too, pour on some fresh milk for calcium or almond milk for added nutrients, and you have yourself an excellent start to the day.
Vitamin D protects against a vast array of chronic diseases. And since these can be more prominent (and more deadly) in older people, it’s an important vitamin to get right. This is a vitamin which is mainly produced in the skin when it’s exposed to sunlight, but many people are deficient in it. Especially older people, as the skin becomes less and less efficient at producing the vitamin from sunlight. Few foods naturally contain vitamin D, but luckily lots of products are now fortified with it. It’s debated whether a vitamin D supplement is needed, but upping your intake of healthy fortified products and spending time outdoors is no bad thing.
The digestive system slows as we age, and you might begin to notice issues with bowel movements. In order to keep everything healthy and moving as it should, you need enough fiber in your diet. This also helps to prevent heart disease which is a huge killer. Eat plenty of whole grains such as those in bread, cereal, and wholemeal pasta. Beans are an excellent source, as are fruits and vegetables. Drinking lots of fluids with fiber is essential too, to help the gut function correctly.
The issue with vitamin b12 is that as we age, our body struggles to absorb it. This can quickly lead to deficiencies, which is an issue since b12 is responsible for creating red blood cells as well as keeping the body’s nervous system healthy. If you lack in this vitamin, you’re likely to notice weakness, tiredness, and lightheadedness along with heart palpitations, digestive issues and even vision loss. The highest sources are animal products: meat, fish, eggs and dairy. Upping your intake of these foods (go with lean products to keep your heart healthy) and take a B12 supplement if your doctor says you need one.
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Doctors Lounge - Orthopedics Answers
"The information provided on www.doctorslounge.com is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between a patient/site visitor and his/her physician."
Forum Name: Bone infections
Question: Osteomyleitis in tooth socket/jaw?
|Musicman - Sat Apr 04, 2009 10:33 am|
Hello- I am 56 year old male, totally healthy and no major problems ever. In 2005 I had my 2 left wisdom teeth pulled along with the molar next to the upper wisdom tooth. Both upper extractions perforated my sinus floor. The dentist who pulled the molar talked me into letting him "debreid" the area after extraction with a dental burr. I have had permanent recurring burning and pain ever since, and a sensation of liquid seepage from the upper site area. I have had numerous dentists and oral surgeons and TMJ guys look at me. I have had x-rays which they all say look great and healed. I had CT scan of sinus (normal & floor healed) but last year had an MRI which the oral surgeon/doctor said showed "bone marrow edema" in the sites. I am aware that osteomyletis/necrosis of the jaw/tooth sockets is a controversial subject. Some dentists recognize this and some do not. I believe the dentist who scraped the molar socket traumatized the area deeply and it hasn't recovered in some way,although a panoramic x-ray from 3 weeks ago looked fine according to my local dentist.
Is it possible to have a low grade osteomyleitis situation around empty tooth sockets from the dental trauma which lingers for years and causes the burning and referred pain?? I have had 3 rounds of bone specific antibiotics which didn't seem to make any difference. I have had some recent success with the herb goldenseal (antiinflammatory and antiinfection). According to some dentists the only recourse is to re-open the gums and re-clean the area. Before I would do anything like this I would like to be positive that it's a necessary procedure.Plus the success rate of these types of surgeries isn't good enough for me, and many people require repeat surgeries after that. Is there a definitive way or scan to tell if there's a problem in the site because many websites say x-rays and traditional scans don't show these things well on the jaw area?
|John Kenyon, CNA - Sat Apr 04, 2009 9:40 pm|
This is a fairly complex problem, but it may not be as complex as it first appears. It depends. First, the best imaging method for a clear look is probably MRI. All others will run into varying degrees of difficulty. MRI may not be possible, however, depending upon the possible presence of any metal in your teeth.
What may have happened is there has developed some edema of the marrow due to a rather slow healing process (which might be considered a form of low-grade osteomyelitis), and this may be affecting a distant branch of the facial nerve. A good way to test this theory would be to try a course of medication intended to block nerve pain. If it is effective this is probably the case. Since there appears to be no evidence of current infection it may not be justifiable to re-disturb the area, especially if the symptoms can be managed medically until the problem resolves.
This is far from a definitive answer, but as you've already learned, the area is obscure enough to make the matter highly controversial. You can almost choose your approach via the doctor you decide seems most agreeable. Personally I'd hope for symptomatic relief until and unless infection shows a definite presence via positive blood cultures, elevated white count, fever and local pain and swelling. It sounds as though this could be a long term, chronic problem without any acute manifestation, so if blocking the pain works this may be your best bet.
I hope this is helpful. Good luck to you and please follow up with us as needed.
|Musicman - Mon Apr 06, 2009 9:46 am|
Thank you for the response,Dr. Is there anything you can recommend to speed up healing process besides the supplements I take? How long can bone traumas like the socket being debreded take to recover? After all this happened in late 2005. I realize everyone heals at different rates but as I read different online forums there are thousands of folks who have the same type of problem and some for many many years. I read that one gentleman had to go on intravenous antibiotic for 12 weeks.
The only swelling in the area I ever had was right after the upper molar was pulled and I used a hot wet washcloth all evening and awoke with a swollen parotid area like a chipmunk, which only lasted one day.My temperature is usually LOW(96.7), never have any fevers.Weather fronts affect the pain too.
|Musicman - Thu May 07, 2009 6:31 pm|
I found the answer. I visited a TMJ/Pain expert/oral surgeon and after some exams he ground down the top of one of the lower molars a bit. It appears the upper and lower teeth were coming together with too much pressure, like having a high filling, causing inflammatory process in my cheek muscles,bone, and surrounding upper teeth.A massage therapist had mentioned to me this might be the cause. It's been four weeks and the area is 99% pain free and resolving nicely. It will take a while, since the area was inflammed for almost 4 years.
|Tom Plamondon PA-C - Thu May 14, 2009 8:44 pm|
Thanks for the update. Good to hear things are working out and pain levels are down.
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The FTC has updated its online privacy laws and amended sections that describe how companies collect data about kids when they are online. Firms that make websites or services for kids, or know that kids may have access to them, need to get parental okay before they collect audio, video, photographs of kids, or their location data, the new rules say.
The Washington Post reports that companies like Google and Facebook have already begun to describe how these updates could be hard to implement.
Just last week, a study by the FTC indicated that only 20 percent of apps had details about privacy, and several did not let parents know what kind of data they collected or what they used it for.
[Image: Flickr user Scott & Elaine van der Chijs]
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Originally posted by ChrisRay
Thats all fine and dandy for you, But alot of people who buy a Geforce 4 Ti 4400 or a Radeon 9500 Pro will not upgrade these cards for like 3-4 years, So yes its rellevent.
You do realize that the rate CPUs are getting faster 3-4 years means that your cPU is ancient. I think most people usually upgrade within 3 years and since grapohic cards that you are talking about (9500 & 5600) are mid level cards people will upgrade quicker owing to the fact that new games will require faster cards.
I myself upgrade video cards every year but I only buy mid level cards. I bought Radeon 7200 a year later (when 8500 was introduced) and bought 8500 when 9700 was introduced (both times I paid less than 100$ for a card that was selling for 399$ a year earlier.
Also your other comment about programmability I think u are forgetting something HLSL . It doesn't matter how "programmable " your gpu is running proprietry/own coding language if the only coding language people are going to use is a 3rd party language designed for a base minimum requirement defined by the said 3rd party. Why do u think nvidia is pushing for Cg?
Keeping in mind the point above a developer is going to code in HLSL or OGL (both of which are supported by "both" companies) except the implementation is different. R300 is said to run "non propritary" i.e. standard DX paths faster than nv30 so which one is better in you opinion now?
What good is a feature that is never used? ATI's TRUFORM and nv30s longer shaders/dynamic looping (maybe i am mistyping) etc look very good on paper but are they really worth paying extra for when they are not being used?
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When Joseph Wilson was in the market for a pre-fabricated shed, he knew where to look for a good deal.
While at work one afternoon, Wilson pulled up some sheds available on the Home Depot website on his iPad. The prices looked reasonable, but he still wanted to clear the purchase with his wife.
That night, at home, Wilson pulled up the same shed on Home Depot's website. This time, he used their PC desktop computer.
The price was $100 less.
"It didn't seem to fit (Home Depot's) business model," said Wilson, who lives in East Hopewell Township.
Curious - and a little miffed - Wilson mailed a letter to Home Depot's president looking for an answer to the price discrepancy.
Within a couple of days he had a call from the company saying they had not noticed a change and assumed it was a technology glitch. They would look into it, Wilson said he was told.
Something was up.
You are what you click
It's not a secret that companies target customers in their advertising. Chelsea Pazelchak is a senior at York College majoring in marketing.
In her consumer behavior class, she was taught the principles of targeting consumers, like finding ways to meet customers where they spend their time - the Internet, television, Facebook; learning the style of the person - do they rent or own their home or car. To what brands are they loyal and why.
"In consumer behavior it's a downfall to target just a demographic," Pazelchak said, meaning something they can't control like age or sex. "Instead, you want to focus on their lifestyle," or the choices they make.
In this digital age of mobile phones, tablets and computers, people spend more time and buy more products online, said Gerald Patnode, a professor of marketing and chair of the Graham School of Business at York College.
Advertisers recognize the new media and embrace it to connect with consumers, he said. Orbitz, the online travel company, publicized their data mining strategy this summer after various wire reports claimed Apple users were seeing higher prices than people searching on a PC.
Barney Harford, Orbitz CEO, wrote an op-ed column in USAToday explaining how the company uses consumer information.
It's all about collecting information about where people click, Harford said, not what type of computer is being used. The company collects your data and then tailors your next visit to the website to reflect your previous choices.
For example, what type of hotel room you like to reserve or how much you're willing to pay.
Your TV might be watching you
While a tailored Internet experience is now commonplace, addressable television ads are starting to show up, Patnode said.
Allstate Insurance is trying a new strategy to sell renter's coverage where you will only see the ad if you currently rent.
Two neighbors could be watching the same show at the same time and on the same commercial break see two different commercials.
It all got started in politics, Patnode said. Political parties would target voters by collecting socio-demographic data and tailor their message depending on what which television station it was aired.
Allstate aired the commercials on DirecTV and Dish Network. The information necessary to target consumers was purchased from data collection firms, Advertising Age magazine reported.
This type of targeting could bring up questions of privacy from consumers, Patnode said. "There's always the concern that a group of people will get upset from a lack of privacy," he said.
Overall, however, consumers respond well to ads that present products they want, Patnode said. So, companies will keep collecting the data and consumers will give up some privacy.
'No more secrets'
After a couple of weeks, a representative from Home Depot's service department called Wilson.
He was told the discrepancy in online shed prices was because of regional pricing.
"There are so many factors that go into regional pricing," said Jennifer King, a senior manager of external communications and social media at Home Depot.
Factors like supply, demand and local taxes can affect why identical items might have different prices at different stores, she said.
If a consumer does not choose a particular store location on the website, they will be shown a national price, King said.
Wilson determined the price difference he saw was caused by not choosing a store location on his iPad, which then gave him a national price. When he looked up the shed at home, the site displayed the nearest store's price.
The site was trying to present a Home Depot experience based on the data from two different computers that both happened to be owned by Wilson.
And that's supposed to happen, King said. Home Depot collects data based on where consumers click and the site could look different depending on your search history.
This marketing strategy isn't new, Patnode said. Advertisers have been collecting information on what consumers buy for decades.
"The change is the accessibility of information," he said. "There's no more secrets."
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ST. PAUL — It started with parlay cards. It morphed into betting with a bookmaker.
Years later, Don Weinberger's compulsion to gamble had him skipping work to visit the casino. All the while, he kept his habit and the debt he accrued because of it from his wife. When the truth came to light it nearly tore his family apart.
It's now been more than two decades since Weinberger has gambled, something he attributes to his faith in God and Gamblers Anonymous, which he continues to be involved with today. But seated in a downtown St. Paul eatery on a recent Friday morning, he recalled clearly the mindset of his younger self and the many others affected by gambling addiction.
"The scourge of a compulsive gambler is that when you win, it's never enough," he said.
According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, or the NCPG, compulsive gambling affects approximately 2 million U.S. adults — roughly 1% of the U.S. adult population. A further 4 to 6 million are thought to be “problem gamblers” who do not necessarily meet the criteria for pathological gambling.
But less certain is the scope of gambling addiction in Minnesota. The most current data on the prevalence of the disorder in the state comes from an official survey conducted in 1994.
State agencies have been working on a new survey for several years and in 2018 commissioned the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation of St. Paul to take one. The contract for the study is for approximately $400,000, according to the Department of Human Services.
Helen Ghebre, a community capacity building team supervisor with the state human services department, said the findings of the survey are currently being reviewed and that a publicly available report on them is expected to be published before the end of February.
Conducted by mail over a period of several months in 2019, the survey sampled from a random pool of 35,000 Minnesotan households and included questions about gambling frequency and attitudes. Ghebre said the results will illustrate the rate and severity of problem gambling in Minnesota as well as the demographics it most effects.
"We are using this to better target where we direct resources and funding," she said.
Ghebre said she could not make preliminary comments on the findings of the survey because they are still being reviewed. She could not say why it took the agency until recently to conduct a follow-up to the 1994 survey, but added that agency leadership was supportive of the idea.
The department plans to take the surveys more regularly in the future, she said, roughly once every three to five years.
Until the new study is published, a survey more than 25 years old continues to be one of the few official sources on gambling addiction rates in Minnesota. That survey found approximately 4.4% of the state’s adults either show signs of problem gambling or have a pathological compulsion to gamble.
In a recent survey of its own, the NCPG estimated that gambling problems and addiction affected approximately 3.6% of Minnesotans in 2016, or about 152,000 people.
Even if only a small percentage of Minnesotans are affected by gambling problems, the amount of money they spend may not be insubstantial. In a separate report from 2018, the state human services department said that assuming problem gambling accounts for between 15% and 33% of gambling revenues, as it does in other states, then problem gamblers generated anywhere from $266 million to $585 million of Minnesota's gambling revenue in 2014.
Minnesota’s billion-dollar gambling industry does help to fund a range of government services as well as youth activities and scholarships. The Minnesota Gambling Control Board reported the state's gambling industry had a total of about $359 million after prize payouts to spend on wages, taxes, rent, charitable contributions and other lawful expenditures in fiscal year 2019.
The industry also contributes to state-funded options for inpatient and outpatient gambling addiction treatment. In 2016, the NCPG said that approximately 600 Minnesotans enrolled in such programs, which are supported in part by state lottery revenues, charitable gaming tax dollars and Native American gaming industry contributions.
According to that report, Minnesota ranked 14th in the U.S. in terms of "per capita public spending dedicated problem gambling services."
Gambling addiction and problem gambling affect people of all different ages, ethnicities and backgrounds. But according to Brien Gleeson, an addictions counselor at the Mayo Clinic hospital in Eau Claire, Wis., some demographics appear to be more vulnerable than others.
"One particular population that we are more concerned about would be older folks, for a variety of reasons," he said.
Gleeson said that his patients tend to gamble most often at casinos. With more free time and retirement funds on hand, he said that some senior citizens find it difficult to resist their allure.
For some, the chance to socialize at a casino can be as enticing as the chance to win. An elderly couple might go to a casino, Gleeson said, as a way to spend time together.
Compulsive gambling manifests in a range of symptoms, Gleeson said, the most distinct of which is gambling to make back lost money.
"If you’re chasing your losses, you’re headed in the wrong direction," he said.
Gleeson said that many of his patients have successfully managed to cope with gambling addiction by themselves. Others, he said, turn to self-help groups like Gamblers Anonymous.
Gambling establishments themselves, he said, appear willing to help. Many casinos allow those who believe they have a gambling problem to voluntarily ban themselves from entry.
As it becomes less and less taboo to openly discuss drug and alcohol addiction, Gleeson said gambling addiction is starting to shed its stigma as well. Hopefully, he said, that will encourage more people affected by it to seek treatment.
But because money is still seen by some as impolite to talk about, financial planner and counselor Melanie Hardie said many are still unwilling to open up about the other ways they mismanage it.
Some psychologists have termed behaviors like money worshiping, compulsive buying and secretive spending as "money disorders." Unlike compulsive gambling, however, money disorders are not recognized as a clinical diagnosis by the American Psychological Association.
A former mental health counselor, Hardie today works at LifeWorks — a company headquartered in Atlanta that offers financial counseling to the employees of other businesses — and is an active member of the Minnesota chapter of the Financial Planning Association. In her view, mental health issues do not necessarily lead to money mismanagement so much as a lack of financial education does.
"Is it 'compulsive spending,'" she asked, "or a lack of knowledge?"
A bill introduced in the Minnesota Legislature last year proposed to make financial literacy a requirement for high school graduation but was not passed. Some educators objected to the measure, saying that the decision to mandate personal finance courses should be left to school districts, many of which already teach aspects of the subject in other courses.
Whatever their causes, poor spending and saving habits can quickly cascade. Hardie said the inability to pay off a heavy debt load, for example, can lead to a poor credit rating, which in turn can make it difficult if not impossible to obtain a mortgage or car loan.
To help break the cycle, some libraries and community centers have hosted free and low-cost classes on personal finance and credit repair. Some financial planners and non-profit organizations will occasionally offer to do pro bono work as well, Hardie said.
Older Minnesotans with money troubles, meanwhile, can call the Senior LinkAge Line for a referral to a financial counselor.
Like Gleeson, Hardie said she hopes that those who have mismanaged their money will be viewed more sympathetically in future and feel encouraged to ask for help.
"As long as it’s a taboo subject, we're not going to learn and develop and grow," she said.
| 117,205
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SECURITY AND ACCESS TO CAMPUS FACILITIES
To assure the security and access to Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College is monitored, the college will:
Supervisor on each campus will maintain a computerized log of individuals with keys.
CRIME PREVENTION MEASURES
Safeguard yourself and protect your belongings by using common sense and taking the following precautions that will reduce the likelihood of you becoming a victim of crime.
IF YOU DRIVE A CAR
FOR YOUR BELONGINGS
Personal safety must begin with you. Be aware of the possibility of being assaulted.
Take the following precautions to protect yourself:
IF YOU ARE VICTIMIZED
Your welfare and preventing a repeat occurrence is our main concern.
STUDENT CODE OF CONDUCT
For additional information regarding academic and non-academic relationships between students and the college, refer to the Student Rights and Responsibilities in the Student Code of Conduct Handbook.
| 148,023
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Not only is black mold gross- its dangerous to your health.
If you've ever had a flood effect your house- here is some great information shared to use by AccuWeather-
Mold, especially toxic black mold, growth is a big concern after a flood.
Experts say even if a home was not flooded, being without power and air conditioning for more than 72 hours can create conducive conditions for mold growth in a structure and resultant health concerns.
With over 100,000 species, the color, shape or size of the mold to the naked eye cannot tell you whether mold is toxic or not.
That's why it is crucial to have lab testing performed from a mold inspection.
"Staccibatrus which often is referred to as 'black mold' is a slow-growing, but quite dangerous mold," Carl Carlson, managing partner for Green Home Solutions, said.
Carlson said to keep in mind that other species of mold can elicit an allergenic response in a human as well.
"Molds don’t need to be any particular color, and all have the potential to cause respiratory distress like asthma and sinusitis or more pervasive infections in the immuno-compromised, plus all molds produce toxins that allow them to survive but which are known to be toxic to humans and pets," Dr. Cameron Jones, director of Biological Health Services and a consultant on indoor air quality and environmental microbiology.
Experts say the number one thing you must do to to prevent mold is remove and replace all water-damaged building elements.
"Whilst this is sometimes alarming news, once floodwater has saturated drywall, wall insulation and flooring timbers, mold will immediately begin growing after the water subsides," Jones said.
#flood #water #mold #toxic #urgentcare #berwynpa #doctorsbest
| 233,050
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“From the perspective of the political actors involved, the problem lies in the extent to which these initiatives came into conflict with the imperatives of governance. Beyond their commitments and program preferences, concerns about political survival and reproduction, inevitably occupy a central place among those who assume governmental roles.”
Philip Kitzberger */ Regional, May 2015
Since the beginning of the present century, the role of the media has become the subject of unprecedented political mobilization in Latin America. This politicization has denaturalized the existing media order, ushering in an unparalleled debate on its democratic deficits.
In much of the region, the post-neoliberal political shift created the conditions that (re)motivated those social actors committed to media democratization so as to mobilize.
A series of government experiences of a more progressive nature were found to be receptive to these demands. Some, like those instigated by the Workers’ Party in Brazil and the Broad Front in Uruguay, responded to their historic commitment to the democratization of the media. Others, led by new leaderships that had emerged from situations of crisis, tested the possibilities of these agendas, taking into account their level of confrontation with the established sectors heavily represented in the traditional media.
Even in cases like Mexico, with governments removed from such demands for democratization, social mobilization against one of the most concentrated media systems in the region forced the inclusion of this issue into the political agenda.
Beyond this new scenario, the extent to which (and way in which) these agendas were converted into legal reforms aimed at democratizing the sector varied widely depending on the power relationships in the different social, political and institutional arenas.
From the perspective of the political actors involved, the problem lies in the extent to which these initiatives came into conflict with the imperatives of governance. Beyond their commitments and program preferences, concerns about political survival and reproduction, inevitably occupy a central place among those who assume governmental roles. From this perspective, those actors who control resources that are potentially threatening for political stability itself, become the focus of strategic consideration. Media institutions control ideas, information, agendas, reputations, visibility and public legitimacy. In Latin America, these resources are heavily concentrated in large conglomerates and their control is framed within an instrumentalist culture that positions these resources according to corporate interests or specific political agendas. This configuration creates situations in which certain media actors are perceived as strategic for governance.
In spite of the erosion of audience domination that has come about due to changes in communications technologies, the on-going reputation of certain traditional media actors has made them effective powers able to influence the political process.
That power over reputation allows these actors to build effective power and keeps certain issues from being placed on the political agenda. Moreover, it facilitates the conquest of institutional areas of influence, the colonization of state agencies and negotiations, at hierarchical level, of market protections and reserves for their interests in increasingly competitive environments.
Although this phenomenon is widespread in the region, in terms of the different national contexts, various dynamics can be identified that determine different strategic options. In Argentina, for instance, the first Kirchner government was the product of a huge political crisis, had limited electoral legitimacy and was institutionally weak. In this genetic context, the pragmatic understanding with the Clarín Group, perceived as essential in order to foster dialogue with broad sectors of the society, appeared as the only strategic option guaranteeing governance. However, since the agrarian conflict of 2008, the hostile coverage of the government by the media outlets of this group made Clarín (in the eyes of the executive) irredeemably committed to its political downfall. Given this situation -and the broad endorsement within civil society for the government’s plans for the deconcentration of the media market- the government chose to veer towards a strategy of radical confrontation that created the setting for legal reforms.
The example of Brazil provides an interesting contrast to that of Argentina. It would be difficult to claim that the conglomerate headed by the Globo network has enjoyed a minor reputation as a strategic player capable of conditioning the country’s governance. In fact, and despite the historic rivalry, the Workers’ Party came to power in 2003 exploring a pragmatic understanding similar to that mentioned above. Moreover, the hostile coverage that accompanied the outbreak of the Mensalão crisis did not lead to a change in the government’s strategy, nor towards the adoption of a radical confrontational approach similar to that in Argentina. So what reasons accounted for this difference?
A major factor lies in the sequence of events that affected subjective perceptions regarding media power. In 2009, the Kirchner-led Judicialist Party lost the mid-term legislative elections following the start of hostilities with the Clarín group. Despite the massive loss of votes among urban middle-class sectors, Lula da Silva was reelected in 2006 after winning the support of working class sectors in Northeast Brazil. Consequently, both governments drew different lessons about the media’s ability to affect political survival. These considerations shaped the respective strategic options along with other political factors.
In 2009, and in the wake of its electoral defeat, the Kirchner government managed to build a majority in both houses of the legislature so as to approve the Law on Audiovisual Communication Services. In Brazil, major obstacles have hindered the potential formation of the majority needed to support the regulatory reform of the media sector.
Fragmentation of the party system has made the Workers’ Party the progressive ruling party with the lowest number of legislative representatives in the region. The WP on its own has not exceeded 18% of legislators in either legislative chamber since forming its first government. And even with its leftist allies (with whom it shares reformist commitments) it has not exceeded the 30% quota. In fact, the WP has governed as part of a broad coalition of between 8 and 12 parties, some of which are highly pragmatic, and others directly conservative.
In Brazil, legislators are elected by a system of proportional representation on the basis of an open list which, by personalizing electoral competition, makes them particularly vulnerable to media scrutiny. This stands in contrast to Argentina, where closed electoral lists provide greater weight and autonomy to political-partisan organizations.
Added to this greater media influence on political careers is the presence of a complex web of interests between political and media elites in Brazil. Since the return to democracy, the granting of radio and television licenses to local politicians has acted as an important resource for various governments in order to obtain support. Thus, a high percentage of legislators have developed local media interests, and many of them have formed links, under conditions of affiliation, with the country’s large media chains, particularly the Globo Network. This complex web has been deemed the «electronic rule of the coronels” and can be noted in the legislature as a virtual «media caucus», with a strong presence in both chambers and specific legislative committees. Although in Argentina there are certainly links between politicians and the local media, these have not been extended and connected in any comparable fashion.
This brief comparison underlines the situation without depleting the importance of the relevant contexts. The fate of the demands for media democratization depends on their ability to articulate –and without losing direction- with the governance concerns of their allies in the political arena.
* Torcuato Di Tella University. Conicet
The formation of the so-called “Tele-bench” in the Mexican Congress is an eloquent example.
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Nancy Rewalt is a coffee drinker and it is at Tim Horton’s in Richmond where she logs onto her laptop most mornings to come up with the inspiration for her children’s novels.
Now that her first book of fiction, “Aerial: A Spider’s Tale,” is out, Rewalt hopes to have Aerial star in an animated feature film.
She said the target audience for the book is for ages 9 to 13 years old, but the movie would interest “everyone from 5 to 90.”
“I go to Tim Horton’s where I work,” said Rewalt, a retired elementary school teacher in Macomb and St. Clair counties. “They have a special corner just for me to write about Aerial.”
Rewalt is hoping to raise money on a “crowd-sourcing” website called Kickstarter.com. to fund a 3-minute animated trailer.
“If successfully funded by a generous public,” Rewalt said, “(then) broadcasters such as Pixar, Paramount, can view it at the various film forums hosted throughout the year.”
She hopes an animated feature film or a television series could result. And that would be an amazing story for a local author who started writing books after learning the trade as a teacher.
“Over the many years I was an elementary teacher (second and third grade), a number of students entered my classroom with a limited number of reading skills — one knew only 12 letter sounds of the alphabet,” Rewalt recalled. “The child wept holding his reading basal in his hands.
I remember looking down at him and said with a smile, “Don’t worry. You’ve come to the right place. That’s what I do best.”
The inspiration for “Aerial: A Spider’s Tale” came near Halloween when a cross orbweaver spider had taken up residence next to her pool deck.
“This story was designed into 40 cloth books decorated with webs and spiders and given as Christmas gifts to my daughter’s classroom students,” she said. “I would send books to my daughter who is a teacher in Las Vegas. I always wrote three stories a year and put the student’s names in as certain characters.”
Rewalt said she has written a lot of books, but not all of them have been published.
The Aerial tale has turned into a series, which Rewalt hopes to finish when “Aerial goes into outer space and everything is a life lesson.”
“My best so far is Aerial goes to Scotland and meets a specific indigenous spider, which you find in the UK and Asia,” she said. “They can walk on land but their preference is to be in the water. Aerial falls off a boat — I found out spiders don’t drown. Instead, their body shuts down and goes into a coma and when they reach dry land they come alive.”
Without coffee, Aerial the Spider might not have made it on the children’s book list.
“Tim Horton’s, they make great coffee,” she said. “I love McDonald’s coffee, but just can’t concentrate with the activity that goes on there. I need more of an adult setting. Tim Horton’s is so perfect for me to write.”
Rewalt not only is an author, but also mentors aspiring authors. “I have three people I mentor — ages 9, 15 and 66, so I have expanded my horizons a bit,” she said. “I’ve been writing my whole life. I don’t remember when I didn’t write.”
For more information on “Aerial: A Spider’s Tale,” visit www.aerial-the-spider.com. To view the video, go to http//tinyurl.com/aerial-the-spider at Kickstarter. Choose a Pledge reward found under the photo of Nancy holding an Aerial book. To reach Nancy Rewalt, call 586-727-7225.
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Image via Terry's Diary
Sorry but there is no way Gloria Steinem posed for this picture fully cognizant of who the creepy tentacle wrapped around her body belongs to. The feminist icon launched her career with a 1963 article which went undercover at The Playboy Club (you can read it here) and spent the following fifty years as the most visible member of the Women's Movement (not that it's much of a "movement" anymore). There are legitimate reasons to criticize her, but her commitment to feminism is not one of them. There's no way she could have known of Richardson's reputation or his work in advance of this picture, there's just no way. Look at that taunting Terry leer.
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Galileo In-Orbit Validation four-satellite constellation. In 2011 and 2012 the first four Galileo satellites were launched into orbit. Four is the minimum number of satellites needed to perform navigation fixes. In the year that followed, these satellites were combined with a growing global ground infrastructure to allow the project to undergo its crucial In-Orbit Validation phase.
Credit: ESA - P. Carril
Europe's fledgling satellite-navigation system has achieved a crucial milestone, showing that it's capable of pinpointing locations around the globe.
The four satellites that currently comprise the Galileo satellite constellation — Europe's version of the United States' GPS system— have passed a key test called In-Orbit Validation (IOV), European Space Agency officials announced Monday (Feb. 10).
"IOV was required to demonstrate that the future performance that we want to meet when the system is deployed is effectively reachable," Sylvain Loddo, ESA’s Galileo ground segment manager, said in a statement. "It was an intermediate step with a reduced part of the system to effectively give evidence that we are on track."
The IOV phase began in March 2013, when Galileo's space and ground infrastructure came together to allow the system's first determination of a ground location. The test campaign was a lengthy affair carried out across Europe, officials said.
"ESA and our industrial partners had teams deployed in the field continuously for test operations," said Marco Falcone, ESA’s Galileo system manager. "More than 10,000 kilometers were driven by test vehicles in the process of picking up signals, along with pedestrian and fixed receiver testing. Many terabytes of IOV data were gathered in all."
The four Galileo satellites— which launched in 2011 and 2012 — performed well during the tests, achieving an average positioning accuracy of 26 feet (8 meters) in the horizontal direction and 30 feet (9 m) in the vertical 95 percent of the time, officials said. The system's average timing accuracy was 10 billionths of a second.
Those numbers should get better as more satellites come online. ESA plans to launch six more Galileo spacecraft during 2014, potentially allowing the constellation to start providing its initial services by the end of this year, ESA officials said.
The Galileo satellite navigation network will eventually consist of 30 satellites. The total price tag for the project, which has suffered from cost overruns and delays, is estimated to be around $7.5 billion.
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|A standard procedure for creating a frailty index.|
|Jump to Full Text|
|PMID: 18826625 Owner: NLM Status: MEDLINE|
|BACKGROUND: Frailty can be measured in relation to the accumulation of deficits using a frailty index. A frailty index can be developed from most ageing databases. Our objective is to systematically describe a standard procedure for constructing a frailty index.
METHODS: This is a secondary analysis of the Yale Precipitating Events Project cohort study, based in New Haven CT. Non-disabled people aged 70 years or older (n = 754) were enrolled and re-contacted every 18 months. The database includes variables on function, cognition, co-morbidity, health attitudes and practices and physical performance measures. Data came from the baseline cohort and those available at the first 18-month follow-up assessment.
RESULTS: Procedures for selecting health variables as candidate deficits were applied to yield 40 deficits. Recoding procedures were applied for categorical, ordinal and interval variables such that they could be mapped to the interval 0-1, where 0 = absence of a deficit, and 1= full expression of the deficit. These individual deficit scores were combined in an index, where 0= no deficit present, and 1= all 40 deficits present. The values of the index were well fit by a gamma distribution. Between the baseline and follow-up cohorts, the age-related slope of deficit accumulation increased from 0.020 (95% confidence interval, 0.014-0.026) to 0.026 (0.020-0.032). The 99% limit to deficit accumulation was 0.6 in the baseline cohort and 0.7 in the follow-up cohort. Multivariate Cox analysis showed the frailty index, age and sex to be significant predictors of mortality.
CONCLUSION: A systematic process for creating a frailty index, which relates deficit accumulation to the individual risk of death, showed reproducible properties in the Yale Precipitating Events Project cohort study. This method of quantifying frailty can aid our understanding of frailty-related health characteristics in older adults.
|Samuel D Searle; Arnold Mitnitski; Evelyne A Gahbauer; Thomas M Gill; Kenneth Rockwood|
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|Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Date: 2008-09-30|
|Title: BMC geriatrics Volume: 8 ISSN: 1471-2318 ISO Abbreviation: BMC Geriatr Publication Date: 2008|
|Created Date: 2008-10-28 Completed Date: 2008-11-26 Revised Date: 2014-10-09|
Medline Journal Info:
|Nlm Unique ID: 100968548 Medline TA: BMC Geriatr Country: England|
|Languages: eng Pagination: 24 Citation Subset: IM|
|APA/MLA Format Download EndNote Download BibTex|
Activities of Daily Living*
Aged, 80 and over
Attitude to Health
Cognition Disorders / diagnosis, epidemiology
Frail Elderly / statistics & numerical data*
Geriatric Assessment / methods*
Health Status Indicators
Mortality / trends*
Physical Fitness / physiology
Proportional Hazards Models
Sensitivity and Specificity
|K24 AG021507/AG/NIA NIH HHS; K24AG021507/AG/NIA NIH HHS; R01AG022993/AG/NIA NIH HHS; R37 AG017560/AG/NIA NIH HHS; R37AG17560/AG/NIA NIH HHS|
Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Geriatr
Publisher: BioMed Central
Copyright ? 2008 Searle et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
open-access: This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Received Day: 9 Month: 5 Year: 2008
Accepted Day: 30 Month: 9 Year: 2008
collection publication date: Year: 2008
Electronic publication date: Day: 30 Month: 9 Year: 2008
Volume: 8First Page: 24 Last Page: 24
Publisher Id: 1471-2318-8-24
PubMed Id: 18826625
|A standard procedure for creating a frailty index|
|Samuel D Searle1||Email: email@example.com|
|Arnold Mitnitski123||Email: firstname.lastname@example.org|
|Evelyne A Gahbauer4||Email: email@example.com|
|Thomas M Gill4||Email: firstname.lastname@example.org|
|Kenneth Rockwood125||Email: email@example.com|
1Geriatric Medicine Research Unit, Dalhousie University & Capital District Health Authority, Halifax, Canada
2Department of Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
3Department of Mathematics & Statistics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
4Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06504, USA
5Division of Geriatric Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
Frailty is a state of increased vulnerability to adverse outcomes. How best to operationalize frailty is controversial [1-3], but one method uses a frailty index . The principle is to count deficits in health (which can be symptoms, signs, diseases, disabilities or laboratory, radiographic or electrocardiographic abnormalities) on the grounds that the more deficits a person has, the more likely that person is to be frail. The index is often expressed as a ratio of deficits present to the total number of deficits considered. For example, if 40 deficits were considered, and 10 were present in a given person, that person's frailty index would be 10/40 = 0.25.
Although the idea and approach are relatively simple, the results yielded by the frailty index have been consistent between surveys evaluated by our group [4-7] and by others [8-11] even though not every frailty index considers the same deficits, or even the same number of deficits. For example, across several frailty index measures, people accumulate deficits, on average, at about 0.03/year [4,5]. In each study, the frailer the person is (the higher the deficit count) the more vulnerable they are to adverse outcomes [5,8,11]. The frailty index is strongly associated with the risk of death, institutionalization and worsening health status, especially when at least 30 variables are included . The frailty index also shows a consistent, sub-maximal limit at about 2/3 of the deficits that are considered. For example, if a frailty index is composed of 60 items, the most that anyone will have wrong with them is not 60, but 40 .
The reproducibility of the findings in relation to the frailty index is of some interest because none of the samples in which the frailty index has been operationalized has considered the same deficits. To be clear, it does not matter if study A considered 40 deficits from set X of deficits and study B considered 60 deficits from set Y of deficits; the estimates from each (e.g. the rate of deficit accumulation, the relationship between deficit accumulation and mortality, or the limit to deficit accumulation) appear to be similar. This finding suggests that frailty is a real phenomenon, which is a property of a biologically complex system. It indicates that frailty can be measured in many ways, and therefore can be studied in many existing datasets that might not have set out to measure frailty per se. To encourage more widespread evaluation of frailty ? a goal encouraged by many groups [12-14] ? we present a detailed, step-by-step procedure to describe which potential variables can be included in a frailty index, and how to establish cut-points for continuous variables. Here, frailty indexes were newly created using baseline and follow-up samples from an existing cohort study, and their properties (e.g. rate of increase, limit, and relationship with mortality) were compared with each other, and with earlier work.
The Yale Precipitating Events Project (PEP) is a cohort study based in New Haven CT that enrolled individuals aged 70 years or older. Its methods have been published elsewhere [15,16]. Briefly, 754 community dwelling, English speaking, non-disabled persons with life expectancy and plans to stay in the area for more than 12 months were enrolled in the study. Comprehensive home-based assessments were completed at baseline and every 18 months. The 18-month assessment included 681 participants aged 72 to 98 years. This report uses the baseline and 18 month follow up data to contrast with each other and to compare the properties of the new indexes created in this data set with previously reported frailty indexes. At baseline, most participants (n = 487, 64.6%) were women, and most (n = 682, 90.5%) were white, with a mean Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score of 26.8 (SD = 2.50). Mortality was checked monthly for nine years from the baseline interview and was confirmed by obituaries and death certificates.
A frailty index counts deficits in health. These deficits were defined as symptoms, signs, disabilities and diseases . All health deficits, including continuous, ordinal and binary variables, were taken from the PEP survey data dictionary. Restricted activity, disability in Activities Daily Living (ADL) and Instrumental ADL, impairments in general cognition and physical performance (e.g. impaired grip strength, impaired walking), co-morbidity, self-rated health, and depression/mood were evaluated.
Variables can be included in a frailty index if they satisfy the following 5 criteria:
1) The variables must be deficits associated with health status. Attributes such as graying hair, while age-related, are attributes and therefore not included. 2) A deficit's prevalence must generally increase with age, although some clearly age-related adverse conditions can decrease in prevalence at very advanced ages due to survivor effects. 3) Similarly, the chosen deficits must not saturate too early. For instance, age-related lens changes resulting in problems with accommodation (presbyopia) are nearly universal by age 55; in other words, as a variable, presbyopia saturates too early to be considered as a deficit here. 4) When considering the candidate deficits as a group, the deficits that make up a frailty index must cover a range of systems ? if all variables were related to cognition, for example, the resulting index might well describe changes in cognition over time, but would be a cognitive impairment index not a frailty index. 5) If a single frailty index is to be used serially on the same people, the items that make up the frailty index need to be the same from one iteration to the next . The requirement to use the same items need not apply to comparisons between samples ? i.e. samples that use difference frailty indexes appear to yield similar results .
Deficits should be added until there are at least 30?40 total deficits. There needs to be a minimum number of deficits. In general, the more variables that are included in a frailty index, the more precise estimates become. Similarly, estimates are unstable when the number of deficits is small ? about 10 or less. Even so, an index with 30?40 variables has been shown to be sufficiently accurate for predicting adverse outcomes [6,14]. Furthermore, a frailty index can be constructed using information that is readily available in most health surveys, and is clinically tractable ? i.e. it uses an amount that would be gathered in many routine health assessments of older adults .
All binary variables were recoded, using the convention that '0' indicated the absence of the deficit, and '1' the presence of a deficit. For variables that included a single intermediate response (e.g. 'sometimes' or 'maybe'), we used an additional value of '0.5'.
Frailty index variables can also accommodate ordinal and continuous variables as deficits. To do so requires grading the continuum or rank into a score between 0 (where no deficit is present) and 1 (where the deficit is maximally expressed by the given variable). For some variables, this re-coding is self-evident. Consider the widely used Self-rated Health Question ("How would you rate your health? Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor"). To grade this between '0' and '1', each lower self-rating of health was coded to represent a larger deficit ("Excellent = 0", "Very Good = 0.25", "Good = 0.5", "Fair = 0.75" and "Poor = 1"). Similarly, recognized cut-points can be used for ordinal and continuous variables, such as the rapid walk test . For the MMSE, we recoded deficits according to severity of impairment . We assigned a 1 for scores less than 10, denoting severe dementia, 0.75 for scores ? 10 and ? 17, denoting moderate dementia, 0.5 for scores ? 18 and ? 20, denoting mild dementia, 0.25 for scores >20 and <24, denoting mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 0 for scores ? 24, denoting no cognitive impairment . Some readers might object that a score of '1' seems something of a discount (not a sufficiently high count) for severe dementia, and that losing only 1 point for it, compared with 0.25 points for MCI is not valid on its face. Consider, however, that a person with severe dementia is likely to have many more deficits than a person with MCI, e.g. more disability, poorer physical performance, higher degrees of behavioural problems and so forth.
Because not all ordinal or continuous variables have published or self-evident cut-points, additional work is required to establish the least arbitrary cut-points for these variables. Methods to address this can be broadly categorized as those based on characteristics of the distribution and those based on judgment (e.g. in relation to some clinically relevant hazard) . Here, we employ both approaches. We used all existing previously coded deficits to establish an interim frailty index, whose purpose was to help provide cut-points for the remaining variables. This interim/nearly completed index was then plotted against the remaining ordinal and continuous variables to understand where their cut-points might be determined. The value of the individual variable that corresponded to 0.2 on the interim frailty index, i.e. the value of the variable at which, on average people had a frailty score of 0.2 or higher, was denoted as that deficit's cut-point. The value 0.2 on the frailty index is recognized by multiple frailty measures as approaching a frail state [7,8,22], so that this method met the convention of defining deficit cut-points. In addition, setting the value at, say, 0.3 seems unreasonably high, as this is consistently well into the range of frailty, however, defined (including by an increased hazard) so would be insensitive. Greater sensitivity is obtained at a cut-point of 0.1, but with less specificity.
The rate of accumulation of deficits was calculated by evaluating the slope of a best fit log of the frailty index in relation to age. To evaluate the impact of a given variable on the frailty index, we used an iterative, re-sampling process, similar to "bootstrapping" as detailed elsewhere [19,23]. We performed 1000 iterations where each iteration calculated the baseline and follow up frailty indexes using 80% of their variables, plotted the log of these two frailty indices versus age, and recorded the slope. By analyzing the range of the slopes, we were able to calculate 95% confidence intervals.
To observe the upper limit of the frailty index, the 99th percentiles of each cohort's frailty index was plotted against age. A flattening of this curve (i.e. its approach to a 0 slope) would suggest a common maximum to the frailty index at every age, consistent with earlier observations . Statistical distributions of the frailty index were compared with theoretical models (Goodness of fit by least squares).
Survival analyses were done using bi-variate and multivariate Cox Regression analyses with the frailty index as the independent variable and age and gender as covariates on each of the two survey waves. The survival calculations were based on the available nine year mortality data from the baseline survey. The 18 month follow up survival calculations based from the available seven and a half year (from 18 month interview) mortality data.
The two calculated indexes, one from baseline and one at follow-up, were compared with previously published indexes, to see how well each fit the following characteristics: 1) The Frailty Index should have a skewed density distribution (histogram) that is well approximated by a gamma distribution [4,8,10] 2) The rate of deficit accumulation (prior estimate is 0.03 per year) [4-6]; 3) The presence of a sub-maximal, age-invariant limit to the Frailty Index (prior estimate is ~0.67) [5,6,8]; and 4) Association of the mean value of the Frailty Index with mortality [4-6,8,10,25].
The study protocol was approved by the Yale Human Investigation Committee, New Haven; all participants provided informed consent at baseline and at follow-up. Ethical approval for secondary analyses was obtained from the Capital District Health Authority, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Of the variables considered, 40 variables that met all frailty index criteria at both baseline and follow-up were chosen (Table 1). Variables were eliminated because they did not meet at least one of the five criteria (unrelated to age and adverse outcome, saturated, or there was already ample representation of the system) or because we had identified 40 variables with which to populate the index. Some potential variables excluded were: Distance walked (up to 20 ft.) (saturated), admitted to hospital in the past year (non-age associated), use of a walking device (sufficient variables (i.e. n = 40) were already included), walking a quarter mile (already accounted for by two variables), measured blood pressure (sitting and standing) (non-age associated), fractures (non-age associated), Parkinson's Disease (low prevalence), amputation (non-age associated), liver disease (not present in both surveys), taking medication (controversial in relation to adverse health outcome), light/medium/heavy sports (Unreliable prevalence and age association), measured vision (saturation), and various tests of physical performance (already accounted for in other variables and 40 variables already populating the index), such as finger tap and turning in a complete circle.
Of the 40 variables included in the Frailty Index, three were continuous, with no clear cut-point for inclusion. These were peak flow, shoulder strength and timed usual pace walk for 20 ft. These variables' deficits were determined by plotting them against the frailty index (without the variables being added) and identifying the value corresponding to 0.2 (Table 2). Of interest, when other continuous variables (grip strength, timed rapid walk of 20 ft.) were plotted against interim frailty indexes, similar cut-points to their published cut offs were found (data not shown).
The baseline and follow up Frailty Index distributions were well correlated to a gamma distribution (Figure 1, r2>0.90). At baseline, more people had Frailty Index values between 0?0.15, whereas at follow up, more people had higher Frailty Index values.
In relation to age, the baseline average slope of the deficit accumulation line was 0.020 (95% confidence interval 0.014?0.026); i.e. on average, the estimated mean rate of deficit accumulation was 0.020 per year (Figure 2). For the cohort at follow-up, the slope of the line relating deficits to age was 0.026 (95% confidence interval 0.020?0.032).
In investigating the upper limits (99% sample) to the Frailty Index, we noted that both the baseline and follow-up cohorts no longer showed a relationship between age and deficit accumulation (Figure 2). Indeed, the best fit line of the 99% sample has a slope statistically indistinguishable from 0. The upper limit using the baseline cohort was around 0.6, while the limit using the follow up cohort was about 0.7 (there were four individuals with slightly higher frailty values).
In both cohorts, the construction of the Frailty Index showed little sensitivity to which variables were included (Figure 3). The differences in slopes were negligible when 80% of the variables were re-sampled; differences in the intercepts of the relationship between age and deficit accumulation were more evident, but within non-overlapping confidence intervals (Figure 3).
The baseline and follow up cohort's Frailty Indexes were each associated with mortality. In the bivariate Cox regression analysis, sex, age and the frailty index were each significant predictors of survival in the baseline and follow up cohort (Table 3). In the multivariable analysis, all these variables were significantly related to mortality at both baseline and at follow up.
In a secondary analysis of the Yale Precipitating Events Project, a Frailty Index was constructed for a baseline and a follow-up cohort, respectively. Each step in the process was described, to allow a precise account of what constitutes a health deficit for this purpose, how to select which health deficits to include in a frailty index, how to operationalize any possible deficit (ordinal, continuous and binary) to a range of 0?1 and which characteristics of the frailty index (nature of the distribution; slope in relation to age; presence of a limit) seem to be broadly replicable. Several reproducible characteristics (e.g. the distribution, the slope and limit of deficit accumulation) of each Frailty Index were provided so that they maybe used, as in previous papers [4-11], to describe the overall frailty state of the group. The baseline Frailty Index showed a rate of accumulation to be 0.020 per year (per 1 year increase in age) with an upper limit to the frailty index of about 0.60 while the follow up showed a rate of 0.026 deficits accumulated per year with a limit around 0.70 (Figure 2).
We used a re-sampling by variable procedure to construct confidence intervals for the slopes of the lines (Figure 3). This procedure gives us information about the frailty construct, showing that a range of deficits can in fact be combined to give a result that is informative in the aggregate. In other words, the slope depends on the overall behaviour of the deficit accumulation, and is not driven by a small number of variables. In this regard, earlier work has shown reasonable consistency of the rate of deficit accumulation across community-dwelling random samples . Here, we noted that the follow up cohort had frailty index characteristics ? frailty index values, rate and limit similar to those of previously studied community dwelling random samples. Most notable is the 0.03 accumulation of deficits and the age independent limit to frailty of 0.67. The baseline sample had lower estimates ? a lower average Frailty Index and a lower maximal limit. This suggests that the baseline cohort was not as frail as the follow up cohort.
The relationship between the Frailty Index and mortality is of interest on several grounds, but here is presented chiefly because it represents a relevant and non-arbitrary test of predictive validity. This is important because predictive validity is one of two types of so-called criterion validation, the other being validation against a so-called "gold standard" . As there is no gold standard for frailty assessment, predictive validation is an important method of validating any approach to frailty operationalization. Note that our intent in checking the ability of the frailty index to predict mortality is validation of the index, rather than developing a mortality prediction index that included frailty. If the frailty index were meant to be a mortality prediction instrument, there might be a rationale for weighting several items, particularly age . One notable result from the Cox analyses is that including the Frailty Index increased the impact of being male on mortality. This likely reflects the observation from earlier studies that while men accumulate fewer deficits than do women, any given level of deficit accumulation is more lethal for them and at any given age, females seem to be more frail than males [6,11].
The relationship with mortality is also important in understanding how deficit accumulation might operate. Classically, Gompertz described the rate of mortality being exponentially related to age . Equally unsurprisingly, mortality exponentially increases with the accumulation of deficits [5,8,19]. In addition, acceleration of deficit accumulation is characteristic of older people prior to death .
Our data must be interpreted with caution. Not all items had established cut-points. In addition, cut-points can be difficult to apply across a sample that covers many ages, as the effects of continuous traits can be age-specific. Our approach derived cut-points based on the "interim frailty index" procedure described above. In addition, the sample is small, so that any individual estimates can be unstable; this is where aggregation of items in a frailty index can be helpful, and where the re-sampling strategy is useful.
Our paper also has some strengths. In replicating many of the characteristics of a frailty index in a new sample, we can give additional assurance of the robustness of the approach. By spelling out in detail how each step in constructing a frailty index can be undertaken, and by submitting to an open access journal, we are aiming to make the method widely available. We have also made more precise a method for establishing cut-points for variables that were not constructed for inclusion in a frailty index, thereby further allowing the method to be used. In this regard, the relationship of any given variable to a mean frailty index score of 0.2 might seem arbitrary. In a study that related the frailty index approach to the phenotypic definition of frailty popularized from the Cardiovascular Health Study , 0.2 corresponded to the mean frailty index value for persons defined as "pre-frail" [7,22]. A more recent paper from another group used the 0.2 cut-point on a so-called "deficit index" to distinguish people who were "robust" form those who were "pre-frail". Finally, like many health surveys, the PEP study has many more variables than are needed to construct a 40-item frailty index. Several eligible variables were not included only because we had reached our target of a 40-item Frailty Index. There is no scientific reason not to include more ? we have constructed an frailty index of 70 items. On the other hand, a recurring concern about the frailty index has been the feasibility of calculating it if a lot of variables are used . Here, as in some earlier studies, [7,19,31] we have selected variables at random (boot-strapping) from a list of eligible variables to make up the Frailty Index and have again shown that the results are insensitive to the precise composition of the index.
Change in the health status of elderly people is an obvious concern to clinicians and to population planners. In the next round of analyses, we will be interested to know whether the changes in the frailty states (baseline frailty state versus the follow up state) can be described using a so called "stochastic" transition model which we have evaluated in other community-dwelling elderly samples, although not with ones that include as many performance measures as the PEP study . This intriguing possibility is motivating further inquiries by our group.
A systematic process for creating a Frailty Index was presented for the Yale Precipitating Events Project, a well studied cohort in which deficit accumulation previously had not been evaluated. The process allows operationalization of the frailty index to be carried out in other datasets. The frailty index reveals how frailty, understood as a vulnerability state with an increased risk of adverse outcomes, can be quantified. This method of quantifying frailty can aid our understanding of health and frailty-related health characteristics and outcomes in older adults.
No sponsor had a role in the decision to undertake these analyses or to submit the study for publication. Each author asserts no proprietary interest in the result and no financial conflict of interest.
Sam Searle carried out the analyses and wrote the first draft as part of his PhD program. Arnold Mitnitski supervised these analyses. Evelyne Gahbauer provided the datasets. Thomas Gill is the PI of the PEP study and critiqued each draft. Kenneth Rockwood conceived of the idea with Arnold Mitnitski, with whom he arranged funding and co-wrote the first and subsequent drafts. All authors reviewed and approved the final draft of the paper.
The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here:
Funds for secondary analysis came from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, through an operating grant to Dr. Mitnitski (MOP62823) and by a grant from the Fountain Innovation Fund of the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Foundation. Dr. Gill is the recipient of a Midcareer Investigator Award in Patient-Oriented Research (K24AG021507) from the National Institute on Aging. Kenneth Rockwood is supported by the Dalhousie Medical Research Foundation, as the Kathryn Allen Weldon Professor of Alzheimer Research. Data collection for the PEP study had been funded by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the American Federation for Aging Research, the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation, and the National Institute on Aging (R37AG17560, R01AG022993).
|Bergman H,Ferrucci L,Guralnik J,Hogan DB,Hummel S,Karunananthan S,Wolfson C. Frailty: an emerging research and clinical paradigm?issues and controversiesJ Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2007;62:731–737. [pmid: 17634320]|
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|Walston J,Hadley EC,Ferrucci L,Guralnik JM,Newman AB,Studenski SA,Ershler WB,Harris T,Fried . Research agenda for frailty in older adults: toward a better understanding of physiology and etiology: summary from the American Geriatrics Society/National Institute on Aging Research Conference on Frailty in Older AdultsJ Am Geriatr Soc 2006;54:991–1001. [pmid: 16776798] [doi: 10.1111/j.1532-5415.2006.00745.x]|
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Health Variables and Cut-points for the Frailty Index
|List of 40 Variables included in the frailty index||Cut Point|
|Help Bathing||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Help Dressing||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Help getting in/out of Chair||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Help Walking around house||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Help Eating||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Help Grooming||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Help Using Toilet||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Help up/down Stairs||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Help lifting 10 lbs||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Help Shopping||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Help with Housework||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Help with meal Preparations||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Help taking Medication||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Help with Finances||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Lost more than 10 lbs in last year||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Self Rating of Health||Poor = 1, Fair = 0.75, Good = 0.5, V. Good = 0.25, Excellent = 0|
|How Health has changed in last year||Worse = 1, Better/Same = 0|
|Stayed in Bed at least half the day due to health (in last month)||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Cut down on Usual Activity (in last month)||Yes = 1, No = 0|
|Walk outside||<3 days = 1, ? 3 days = 0|
|Feel Everything is an Effort||Most of time = 1, Some time = 0.5, Rarely = 0|
|Feel Depressed||Most of time = 1, Some time = 0.5, Rarely = 0|
|Feel Happy||Most of time = 0, Some time = 0.5, Rarely = 1|
|Feel Lonely||Most of time = 1, Some time = 0.5, Rarely = 0|
|Have Trouble getting going||Most of time = 1, Some time = 0.5, Rarely = 0|
|High blood pressure||Yes = 1, Suspect = 0.5, No = 0|
|Heart attack||Yes = 1, Suspect = 0.5, No = 0|
|CHF||Yes = 1, Suspect = 0.5, No = 0|
|Stroke||Yes = 1, Suspect = 0.5, No = 0|
|Cancer||Yes = 1, Suspect = 0.5, No = 0|
|Diabetes||Yes = 1, Suspect = 0.5, No = 0|
|Arthritis||Yes = 1, Suspect = 0.5, No = 0|
|Chronic Lung Disease||Yes = 1, Suspect = 0.5, No = 0|
|MMSE||<10 = 1, 11?17 = 0.75, 18?20 = 0.5, 20?24 = 0.25, >24 = 0|
|Peak Flow||See Table 2|
|Shoulder Strength||See Table 2|
|BMI||See Table 2|
|Grip Strength||See Table 2|
|Usual Pace||See Table 2|
|Rapid Pace||See Table 2|
The list of health deficit variables included in the FI and how they were coded as deficits.
Continuous Variable Cut-points
|Variable||Deficit for Men||Deficit for Women||Source of cut point|
|Peak Flow (liters/min)||? 340||? 310||Plotted verses frailty index|
|Body Mass Index (BMI)||<18.5, ? 30 as a deficit.
25-<30 as a 'half deficit'
|<18.5, ? 30 as a deficit.
25-<30 as a 'half deficit'
|Shoulder Strength (kg)||? 12||? 9||Plotted verses frailty index|
|Grip Strength (GS in kg)||For BMI ? 24, GS ? 29
For BMI 24.1?28, GS ? 30
For BMI >28, GS ? 32
|For BMI ? 23, GS ? 17
For BMI 23.1?26, GS ? 17.3
For BMI 26.1?29, GS ? 18
For BMI>29, GS ? 21
|Rapid pace Walk (sec)||>10||>10||Published |
|Usual pace Walk (sec)||>16||>16||Plotted verses frailty index|
Deficit cut off values for continuous variables by sex and source of cut off.
|Analysis||Variable||HR||95% CI||HR||95% CI|
|Bi-variate||Age||1.09||1.07 ? 1.11||1.09||1.06 ? 1.11|
|Frailty Index||1.03||1.02 ? 1.04||1.05||1.04 ? 1.05|
|Male Sex||1.46||1.16 ? 1.82||1.37||1.07 ? 1.74|
|Multi-variatea||Age||1.08||1.06 ? 1.10||1.06||1.04 ? 1.09|
|Frailty Index||1.03||1.02 ? 1.04||1.04||1.04 ? 1.05|
|Male Sex||1.80||1.42 ? 2.27||1.71||1.33 ? 2.20|
Cox Regression analyses of the baseline and follow up. Calculations were based on monthly follow ups for nine years from the baseline interview (or seven and a half years from the 18 month follow up). The frailty index hazard ratios (HR) are calculated with % levels of the index (i.e. the HR measures a change of 0.01 on the index).
a Analysis done with Age, Sex and Frailty Index as covariates
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Setting Lesson Details
Margaret teaches lessons out of her St. Louis Park home studio, which is designed with the learner in mind. Students have the opportunity on a weekly basis to play or be accompanied by the baby grand piano, and parents and families can relax in the waiting room while still being able to hear the lesson itself.
For the siblings of the student, there are quiet toys to play with while waiting, and for the readers, there are plenty of magazines to keep entertained and educated.
The Reid Studio offers piano and voice lessons to beginning and intermediate students of all ages. All students have different strengths and areas to improve, and Margaret takes those into account while working with them. Skills such as ear training, sight reading, and agility are part of all lessons, as they are fundamental to becoming a solid musician!
Lessons are 30 or 60 minutes, with the longer lessons offered to more experienced students or students enrolled in both piano and voice instruction. Lessons are weekly, and the Reid Studio holds two recitals a year, one in the winter and one in the late spring. Though the recitals are not required, Margaret recommends that all students participate! Aside from being fun, the recitals provide a solid goal toward which to strive and prepare students for all sorts of other exciting challenges down the road.
COVID-!9 setup: In-person lessons are being offered to students who are fully-vaccinated and live in a fully-vaccinated household. All other students are virtual at this time. Masks--preferably non-cloth masks--are required for in-person lessons and the studio windows will be open. All recitals will continue to be virtual until the health risks from covid-19 have been mitigated or an outdoor venue with a piano comes available.
Piano students must have either a real piano or an 88-key digital piano with fully-weighted keys and a pedal. Please contact Margaret if you have questions about this or anything else!
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“It starts with the nodding — otherwise normal children begin to nod their heads, pathologically,” wrote NPR reporter Matthew Kielty. “Then come the seizures. The children stop growing and stop talking.”
Also known as nodding syndrome, the debilitating disease has affected more than 3,000 children. Researchers at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and others have attempted to uncover the origins of this deadly illness. Ultimately, the disease wrecks the children, physically and mentally, wrote Kielty.
The Ugandan Ministry of Health has reportedly spent $1.4 million on battling nodding syndrome in 2012. The only effective treatment known is an anti-convulsant medication recommended by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.
Some of the affected children have shown significant improvement since taking the medication, Robert Downing, a microbiologist at the CDC's campus in Entebbe, Uganda, told NPR. Yet, a lack of outside funding and resources for combating nodding syndrome has meant little to no rehabilitation, education or nutrition services for the affected communities.
"They do need help," said Downing. "There's so little there."
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(Photo: REUTERS/James Akena)
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Keep A Bouncer At Your Cat Door With The Pet Porte
If you have visiting cats, raccoons, squirrels, rats and other neighbors entering your home through your cat door, you may soon be relieved of their uninvited calls. A veterinarian on the Channel Islands, David Chamberland, has invented a "bouncer" cat door. Say the secret word, or I'll send you to the moon buster!
The bouncer is in the form of a cat door that can be "trained" to read your cat's microchip. It may not be as exciting as training a pit bull to bounce the unwanteds, but the Pet Porte is a pretty sophisticated device.
The Pet Porte Microchip Cat Flap is the first cat flap to recognize an RFID microchip. Once the Pet Porte is programmed to read your cat's chip, say goodbye to strange bedfellows. The Pet Porte also has other functions, like keeping kitty in at night and it even has a "vet button" to keep kitty from running away when he is scheduled to go to the vet. (It figures that a vet invented it; think about the money he's lost in kitty no-shows.)
If you have more than one cat, no problem. The Pet Porte can be programmed to read up to 32 microchips... and if you have that many cats, you are an official cat lady, whether you're male or female!
Unfortunately for those in the U.S., the patented Pet Porte Microchip Cat Flap is only available in the United Kingdom and Europe. Hopefully, the Pet Porte will be matched to U.S. RFID technology soon.
That's the buzz for today!
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In medieval texts and some early printed books, the numerals are written in lower case letters and u was frequently substituted for v. In the final position of the numeral, j could be used instead of i. So 18 could be written xuiij rather than XVIII. These substitutions are particularly found in italic fonts.
Sometimes the M and D were written using what I call above 'deep parentheses'. It is hard to show these using the fonts available on the computer but they were like a C and a mirror image or upside down C. Typesetters used the font the wrong way up to depict it. I will use normal parentheses to show them. In some examples the Roman numeral M is represented by a I in these deep parentheses thus ( I ). You can see how writing this quickly could lead you to write M. Similarly, D is sometimes represented by an I followed by a backwards C, thus I ). That seems to be used because it represents half of the M or 500. Again, written quickly it would become D.
This inscription, found in Rome, reads M D LXXXIII or 1583. The use of the deep parentheses - C and backwards C - is very clear.
|Here a typesetter has used the C font upside down to depict the date in a book. It has been amended by hand to read M D CCC XX III or 1823. Underneath it appears to read M D CC XC or 1790.|
The use of ( I ) for M or 1000 is derived from the way Romans depicted larger numbers explained below..
At their simplest, numbers are formed by stringing the letters together to add up to the number required. Like this
The rule is to use the biggest numeral possible at each stage, so 15 is represented by XV not VVV nor XIIIII. It follows from this rule that numerals always go from left to right in descending order. This could still lead to some very long strings. For example, using this rule 99 would be LXXXXVIIII. So at some point a new rule was invented. A smaller value letter to the left of a larger value one is subtracted. So 4 becomes IV - which is 5 minus 1 -
rather than IIII.
There are three rules about these smaller numerals which are placed to the left of a bigger one and subtracted.
This inscription for 1928 breaks one of the rules about subtractive numbers.
These three rules limit the usefulness of the subtraction rule in reducing the length of Roman numerals. Although the year 2000 is quite neat at MM, 1999 is still quite long at MCMXCIX. MIM would be shorter but is not allowed by rule 2 above. See The 1999 Question for a discussion about why. The inscription for 1928, properly written, would be MCMXXVIII, which is longer than the form used.
The spreadsheet package Microsoft Excel has a function to depict numbers in Roman form. To get classical Roman numbers, conforming to the rules on these pages, use =ROMAN(n) where n is your number. There are four other versions of the function using progressively weirder versions of 'Roman' numbers. The fourth, ROMAN(n,4) giving what Microsoft calls the 'simplified' version. None of these four has any validity in terms of what real users of Roman numerals ever did and they seem to have been dreamed up by programmers in Gatesville. For live conversion of real numbers into genuine Roman numerals use ROMAN(xy) where xy is the reference to the cell containing the number you want to convert.
Excel will not display numbers in Roman format without converting them to text. But another software package, Fireworkz for Windows, will do so, allowing live working spreadsheets in Roman numerals! I used Fireworkz to generate the lists of Roman numerals on the adjoining pages. For more about the price and availability of this excellent and powerful software contact Gerald Fitton at Abacus Training.
The subtractive principle was familiar to the Romans as it was used in their calendar. Days were counted as so many before certain fixed points in the month. For example, the 9th of March was VII Id.
That means the seventh day before the Ides on the 15th day (note that the Romans counted the Ides as the first day, so the 9th is the seventh
day before NOT the sixth as you might expect). We also use a subtractive principle in
representing the time when we say 'quarter to eight' or five and 'twenty to nine'.
The strict rules about Roman numerals have been used only relatively recently. In earlier periods, although the subtractive principle was used, it was an alternative rather than compulsory and other forms such as VIIII for 9 and CCCCC for 500 were used. At any date exceptions can be found, as these four examples from different periods and all in Rome itself, show.
Only 33 doorways remain and they are numbered 23 to 54 with one unnumbered entrance. The numbers do not use the contraction IV or IX. Thus arch 29 is XXVIIII and arch 54 is LIIII. However, the contraction for 40 - XL - is used and so door 44 is XLIIII, as the picture below shows.
This plaque is located on one of the four towers which Pope Alexander VI - who was pontiff from 1492-1503 - ordered to be reconstructed. It is thought to be contemporary but may have been carved at a later restoration. Whatever date it is, it shows a complete disregard for the subtractive principle.
When drawing up 'correct' Roman numerals you must use the letters in the correct order and can use the subtractive principle as long as you stick to the three subtractive rules.
Once a number gets bigger than a few thousand, Roman numerals become unwieldy. There are no 'bigger' symbols for 5000, 10,000 or a million. The Romans had two ways of writing bigger numbers. They used what I call above 'deep parentheses' to multiply a number by 1000. They were a C and a mirror image or upside down C and I use normal parentheses to show them. Thus ( I ) is 1000 and ( X ) is 10,000. ( XXIII ) is 23,000. If you want to depict a million you can use ( M ). Alternatively, the parentheses can be nested so ( I ) is 1,000 and ( ( I ) ) is 1,000,000. The numbers can get a bit unwieldy as they get bigger.
An alternative way of depicting larger numbers was to put a horizontal bar over the numeral, which multiplied it by 1000. Thus
|V = 5000 and||X = 10,000.|
On a larger scale 3,852,429 can be depicted as
However, in some cases a sentence containing words and numbers would use a horizontal bar to show simply the letters which were being used as numbers. In other cases that was indicated by a small sign looking like two parentheses () placed above the numbers.
To depict even larger numbers sidebars could be added to the line,
multiplying the total by a further 100 so the enclosed numeral was to be
multiplied by 100,000. Thus
XII meant 12,000 but
| XII | meant 1,200,000. When written in wax on a tablet these sidebars could look like a curved line, and create an ambiguity about the number. Was it a curve straight line or a line with short sidebars? Such a dispute is said to have occurred when the Roman Emperor Tiberius inherited his mother Livia's estate. She had written out the legacies he should pay to various people and one to Sulpicius Galba was written as
| CCCCC | or 50,000,000 sesterces. But the sidebars were short and curved and Tiberius insisted they were simply a curved line and the true legacy was
CCCCC or 500,000 sesterces. As Tiberius was Emperor, poor Galba only got one hundredth of the legacy Livia had intended. A sestertius was enough to buy two loaves of bread, so the modern equivalent is around £1.50 or $2.50, perhaps a little more.
The original source for this story is Suetonius Tranquillus The Lives of the Twelve Caesars which says of Galba
"He showed marked respect to Livia Augusta, to whose favour he owed great influence during her lifetime and by whose last will he almost became a rich man; for he had the largest bequest among her legatees, one of fifty million sesterces. But because the sum was designated in figures and not written out in words, Tiberius, who was her heir, reduced the bequest to five hundred thousand, and Galba never received even that amount." (Suetonius, Galba 5, translated Loeb Classical Library 1914)
The details about the sidebars were added in Georges Ifrah, The Universal History of Numbers, Harvill Press, London 1998, p200. He wrongly cites Seneca (Galba, 5) as his source.
The letter S was used to depict a half. Other fractions were shown by dashes, each dash being worth one twelfth. So - meant 1/12, = meant two twelfths which is one sixth, and so on.
|=||2/12 or 1/6|
|- =||3/12ths or 1/4|
|= =||4/12ths or 1/3|
|- = =||5/12ths|
|S -||1/2 plus 1/12th or 7/12ths|
|S =||1/2 plus 2/12ths or 2/3|
|S - =||1/2 plus 3/12ths or 3/4|
|S = =||1/2 plus 4/12ths or 5/6|
|S - = =||1/2 plus 5/12ths or 11/12ths|
So twenty three and a half would be written XXIIIS and twelve and a quarter is XII-=. The letter S and the dashes were never used subtractively. Other fractions could not be depicted in Roman numerals.
The Roman numeral system did not include zero and Romans had no concept of it in their arithmetic. Which is one reason why Roman numerals are so clumsy for calculation, though it is possible. They tended to use an abacus for arithmetic and that device does have the concept of zero built in - it is represented by an empty row. But it was the Indian and Arab mathematicians after the end of the Roman empire who invented our present system where we have the concept of 'place' and have a distinct symbol to represent zero or an empty column. So when we write '10' for example the zero tells us that the '1' is worth ten times as much as it would be if the number was just 1. The value of this system for arithmetic and calculation and for depicting numbers of any size is so great that the Indo-Arabic way of writing numbers is now almost universal and Roman numerals are confined exclusively as 'counting' numbers rather than as calculating numbers.
history of Roman numerals
Modern uses of Roman numerals
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For the next four years at least, the Chicago area is the center of power in the world of the American Reform rabbinate.
Rabbi Peter S. Knobel, spiritual leader of Beth Emet the Free Synagogue in Evanston, was recently installed as president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the national organization of Reform rabbis, believed to be the oldest and largest rabbinic association in the world.
At the same time Rabbi Ellen Dreyfus, of B’nai Yehuda Beth Sholom in Homewood, was installed as vice president.
Knobel will serve two years, then Dreyfus will take over as president.
As long as records have been kept for the 118-year-old organization, this is the first time the two top leaders have been from the same city.
In addition to the two rabbinic leaders, two more Chicago-era individuals head national Reform movement organizations this year. Lori Sagarin, director of congregational learning at Temple Beth Israel in Skokie, is the president of NATE, National Association of Temple Educators. And Edward Alpert, executive director or Am Shalom in Glencoe, is the president-elect of NATA, National Association of Temple Administrators.
But this article is relevant for more than just Windy City boosterism (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Here are the key paragraphs:
In broad strokes, [Rabbi Dreyfus] says, she sees a clear division between the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox streams, but within the non-Orthodox stream, “the question is how we define the differences between Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism. That’s one of the challenges Peter (Knobel) wants the movement to think about-are there differences that we can really articulate, and do they really matter?”
In the case of young people, she believes the answer is no. “I see a growing post-denominationalism” in a younger generation, she says. “The movement labels are totally irrelevant. How are we going to reach out as a movement to young people who have no interest in movements? that’s another challenge.”
One answer, she says, may lie in the chavurah (informal fellowship group) movement-her eldest son, among many others, identifies with it. “His cohort are less interested in institutional synagogues as they are in studying, celebrating, creating community. At this point we don’t know what will happen to them when they settle down and have children, but we don’t want to lose the best and the brightest because we have become irrelevant,” she says.
This message contrasts sharply with URJ president Rabbi Eric Yoffie’s statements railing against “postdenominationalism”. Rabbi Dreyfus’s message is one that I (and other Reform movement expats) have been waiting for years to hear from the official institutions of the Reform movement: a recognition that we have created meaningful Jewish lives outside the Reform institutions without abandoning our progressive Jewish values (i.e. the reason we’re not there isn’t because we’re not interested in Judaism), and an acknowledgement that we are missed and that our absence highlights an area where the movement falls short. Acknowledging the problem is the first step towards solving it, so the message we’re hearing from the new leadership portends good things for the future.
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This program trains post-residency physicians and other post-doctoral clinical neuroscientists in: (1) the clinical, pathophysiologic, and pharmacologic aspects of neurologic diseases; (2) the conceptualization, ethics, design, implementation, management, analysis, and reporting of clinical trials; and (3) population-based clinical research. The program is directed by senior leaders in clinical trials and other patient-oriented research and translational neuroscience, and includes the principal investigator of Rochester's NeuroNEXT site (also Department Chair), the Director of Rochester's Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and an underrepresented minority faculty member as Assistant Fellowship Director. An integrated 2-3 year program provides: (1) mentoring supervision by 21 neuroscientists and 3 biostatisticians experienced in clinical investigation and in development of novel therapies; (2) a didactic curriculum of basic and applied statistics, neuro-epidemiology and clinical research design; (3) seminars on: clinical trial design; the basic sciences underlying experimental therapeutics; neuroethics; and grant and career development; (4) collaboration with faculty from Neurology and Public Health Sciences with expertise in outcomes, bioinformatics, cost- effectiveness, quality of life and other areas of health service research; (5 training in the emerging fields of global- and tele-neurology; (6) clinical experience in disease states under intensive investigation in Rochester and; (7) mentoring for an independent academic career. Training draws on strengths of clinical neuroscientists with investigative programs in neuromuscular disease, movement disorders, multiple sclerosis, dementia, epilepsy, stroke, and Neuro-AIDS; integration with Biostatistics faculty; and formal interaction with neuroscientists who are developing novel treatment strategies. Trainees gain the necessary skills to: generate new knowledge applicable to the treatment of neurologic disorders, achieve independent research careers, and obtain a tenure-track faculty position in clinical neuroscience. Support is sought for 4 post-residency trainees; 2-4 trainees will be accepted into the program annually. Recruitment and career development focuses on diversity including women, the disabled and underrepresented minorities by developing a diverse program leadership and faculty for mentoring, targeted outreach to underrepresented minority applicants including collaboration with pipeline programs to increase the pool of leadership-focused individuals, and collaboration with the University of Rochester Office for Diversity. Training facilities include: the Clinical and Translational Science Institute and its Clinical Research Center, the Clinical Trials Coordination Center, Biostatistics Department, and three centers: Translational Neuromedicine; Neural Development and Disease; and the Center for Human Experimental Therapeutics. The training program infrastructure is also utilized by trainees supported by other funding sources. Trainees are positioned for leadership in academic institutions and in both government and the private sector.
The growing burden of common and rare neurologic diseases coupled with advances in basic and clinical neuroscience create a compelling need to teach neurologists how to discover and test new treatments for neurologic disease including: longitudinal characterization of disease course and of outcome measures, clinical trial design and biomarker development as well as in economic and global perspectives on treatment development.
|Johnson, Nicholas E; Kaloides, Amy; Jones, Elaine (2016) Neurology Advocacy 2.0: After Sustainable Growth Rate Repeal. JAMA Neurol 73:151-2|
|Heatwole, Chad; Bode, Rita; Johnson, Nicholas E et al. (2016) Myotonic dystrophy health index: Correlations with clinical tests and patient function. Muscle Nerve 53:183-90|
|Salinas, Joel; Sprinkhuizen, Sara M; Ackerson, Teri et al. (2016) An International Standard Set of Patient-Centered Outcome Measures After Stroke. Stroke 47:180-6|
|Johnson, Nicholas E; Ekstrom, Anne-Berit; Campbell, Craig et al. (2016) Parent-reported multi-national study of the impact of congenital and childhood onset myotonic dystrophy. Dev Med Child Neurol 58:698-705|
|Bednasz, Cindy; Luque, Amneris E; Zingman, Barry S et al. (2016) Lipid-Lowering Therapy in HIV-Infected Patients: Relationship with Antiretroviral Agents and Impact of Substance-Related Disorders. Curr Vasc Pharmacol 14:280-7|
|Bellizzi, Matthew J; Geathers, Jasmine S; Allan, Kevin C et al. (2016) Platelet-Activating Factor Receptors Mediate Excitatory Postsynaptic Hippocampal Injury in Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis. J Neurosci 36:1336-46|
|Rowe, Ian A; Tully, Damien C; Armstrong, Matthew J et al. (2016) Effect of scavenger receptor class B type I antagonist ITX5061 in patients with hepatitis C virus infection undergoing liver transplantation. Liver Transpl 22:287-97|
|Statland, Jeffrey M; Heatwole, Chad; Eichinger, Katy et al. (2016) Electrical impedance myography in facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy. Muscle Nerve 54:696-701|
|Damania, D; Kung, N T-M; Jain, M et al. (2016) Factors associated with recurrent stroke and recanalization in patients presenting with isolated symptomatic carotid occlusion. Eur J Neurol 23:127-32|
|Gang, Qiang; Bettencourt, Conceicao; Machado, Pedro M et al. (2015) The effects of an intronic polymorphism in TOMM40 and APOE genotypes in sporadic inclusion body myositis. Neurobiol Aging 36:1766.e1-1766.e3|
Showing the most recent 10 out of 77 publications
| 101,935
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There must always be rules.
Whether chasing a suspected criminal or watching the hero of a movie hunt down his sworn enemy, everyone knows you just can’t shoot someone in the back. When tough man competitions— arguably a progenitor of mixed martial arts—first emerged to see which fighting style was the best, they declared that you couldn’t gouge someone’s eyes out. Even participants in the most vicious, impromptu street corner arguments know that you just don’t talk about somebody’s mama. They are sometimes unwritten, and oftentimes unsaid, but there are always rules.
Except when it comes to the manipulation of Black people.
Last week, American Bridge, a political action committee formed with the goal of stopping the election of Donald Trump, released this anti Trump advertisement.
Most people thought the ad was an effective piece of marketing against Donald Trump’s brand of racial politics. After a week where his alt-right ties were exposed, it seemed like an appropriate throat punch against his dog whistle, dictatorial candidacy. But when I saw it I noticed something different. It hit one of the raw-nerve pet peeves that I have swallowed and allowed to fester for quite some time because no one else seems to be bothered by it. I’m sure I could phrase my objection in a more conservative, educated, unmelaninated way, but I want to say it the way it feels in my chest and burns in my gut:
Keep Martin Luther King Jr.’s name out of your mouth.
Whenever Liberal progressives or right-leaning Conservatives (both terms are correctly pronounced “wyt pee-pull”) talk about race or want to play marionette with the emotions of Black people, their go-to stop in the people-of-color puppet show is always Martin Luther King. I am not sure if it is because he is the only Civil Rights Movement reference they are aware of, or they know how our collective heartstrings are attached to his legacy, but they love to manipulate us towards their side of the argument by trotting out a reference to King. Whenever Black people are getting out of hand by stepping outside whatever prescribed boundaries society has fenced us inside of, some well-meaning White person will remind us what Martin Luther King Jr. would have done. They don’t care what it is, or even if it is true. They will wrap a lie inside the name of the Civil Rights icon as if hey are hiding a pill inside a piece of bacon to feed to a dog.
When protesters in Ferguson and Baltimore took to the streets and tossed Molotov cocktails, pundits commented how this stained the legacy of Martin Luther King, forgetting that he famously said a “riot is the language of the unheard.”
When Black Lives Matter shut down bridges and stop traffic, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly said “Martin Luther King would not support Black Lives Matter” conveniently forgetting the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge was as much a protest against the police violence of Bloody Sunday as it was a voters rights march.
Even neoliberal voices have whitewashed MLK into a peace-loving compromiser instead of the revolutionary, anti-establishment rabble-rouser that he was.
I am sure billionaire George Soros and the group of rich White people (including Susie Buell, the founder of Esprit—the official clothing of Caucasians, and gardener, artist and human Pinterest page Amy Goldman Fowler) meant no specific ill will by framing the stupidity of Donald Trump alongside the assassination of someone who gave their life for the cause of Black freedom. They probably just didn’t care. How often do you see John F. Kennedy’s name thrown out all willy-nilly?
If you ask political observers what they consider the best comeback line ever, they invariably point to the 1988 vice presidential debate when Dan Quayle compared himself to JFK. Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Lloyd Bentsen retorted, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
What Bentsen effectively said was the Caucasian version of, “Keep JFK’s name out your mouth.”
American Bridge could have made as effective an ad against Donald Trump without using the imagery of Dr. King’s death as a political tool, but they intentionally disregard the rules when they want to participate in the Black puppet show.
The more troubling part of all this is that we let them.
The greatest quote of the weekend was in response to Donald Trump using the death of Dwyane Wade’s cousin to gun violence in Chicago as a prop to reach out to Black voters. Cheadle responded by requesting that Trump “die in a grease fire.” It was a beautifully appropriate answer to Trump’s opportunistic exploitation of a painful situation, but it is really no different from Soros and friends’ inserting Martin Luther King Jr.’s death into a carrot dangling from a stick. Ultimately, neither of these groups care about the legacy of Dr. King or Black people in general. If Bugs Bunny could get Hillary Clinton elected they’d flood the airwaves with commercials painting Donald Trump as Elmer Fudd.
They all want the same thing during this hunting season: For Black people to “be vewwy vewwy quiet…”
I thought about ending this article by hoping the people who appropriate the image and legacy of Martin Luther King with reckless abandon for their own purposes die in a grease fire. After their eyes are poked out. And their mamas too.
But I wouldn’t do that. I follow the rules.
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An inflammatory disorder that affects the carpal (wrist) part of a specific nerve. A characteristic of CTS is pain in the hand at night with normal functioning of the little finger (because that digit does not contain a branch of the affected nerve). Repetitive stress, physical trauma, certain diseases, or specific hereditary conditions can inflame the sheaths that surround wrist tendons. With the swelling of small blood vessels, pressure increases on the nerve and impairs its functioning; numbness, pain, and a loss of manual dexterity result. Treatment of CTS usually consists of rest, splinting of the wrist, and the administration of anti-inflammatory drugs. Severe cases require surgery to relieve the pressure.
| 144,975
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As I mentioned when
the CPO disc of Saygun's first two symphonies,
his music is not a total stranger to
the recording studio. There was at least
one Koch International CD including
a viola concerto of his as well as that
CPO disc of symphonies 1 and 2 CPO 999
819-2. The Fifth Symphony is on CPO
Saygun's music was
part of a movement that from 1923 saw
Western influences borne in on authentic
Turkish voices. His writing was in keeping
with the cosmopolitan reforming drive
of President Kemal Atäturk. The
new government supported Turkish composers
to study in the great centres of world
culture, Saygun had financial assistance
to study in Paris. His brethren included
Cemal Resit Rey, Ulvi Cemal Erkin, Hasan
Ferid Alnar and Necil Kazim Akses.
The Fourth Symphony
is a three movement work lasting
well shy of half an hour. The music
recalls the muscular surging energy
of Markevitch and Hartmann. In the second
movement we perhaps detect the gentle
disillusion we associate with Rubbra
or Finzi but with a stronger infusion
of dissonance. I noted less of the Turkish
harmonic ‘sway’ or muezzin melisma-ululation
found in his first two symphonies. The
two outer movements recall the chattering
activity of Alwyn's Fourth Symphony
and in their aggression the grinding
attack of Panufnik's Tragic Overture.
The Violin Concerto
is the biggest work here at three
minutes over half an hour. Once again
the work is creepily energetic, but
finds ample time for almost Delian reflection
and warmth [2:20]. That lyrical vein
also leans towards Berg e.g. at 4.13.
Explosive expostulation from the orchestra
follows the manner of Schoenberg and
William Schuman. Towards the end a Sibelian
tempest boils up and curves down into
silence enigmatically accentuated by
the most gentle of strokes on the tam-tam.
Otherworldly Tempest-like music opens
the second movement Adagio although
there is a more turbulent central episode.
The finale projects a sinister aspect
- a sort of nocturnal march of conspirators
- recalling the finale of Rawsthorne's
Violin Concerto No. 1. In the final
bars the concerto discovers a new optimism
emerging from nowhere. Mirjam Tschopp
seems to be fully in command of the
work's requirements both in drama and
Suite is from Saygun's earliest years.
The three movements are Meseli,
Improvisation and Horon.
Here the Turkish harmonic sway is clearly
heard. The treaty between East and West
does not, in this case, lead to synthesis;
both elements can be heard distinctly.
The suite might be compared with Enescu's
Romanian rhapsodies where folk voices
are to the fore. The sparkling finale
has a very engaging rhythmic signature.
This is music which
in the case of the symphony and concerto
evinces full assimilation of western
art music. The Suite is an extremely
attractive and folk-accented piece.
Saygun's symphony and
concerto will be enjoyed by those who
like their Berg, Hartmann and Alwyn.
All are superbly performed and typically
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She was a friend and for a time the disciple of Williams, and the co-author of Letters to Lalage, in which she added her own commentary and reminiscences to Williams’s letters to her. For a time she was also a friend of Marco Pallis and helped to found the Tibet Society. She wrote her own mystical/ metaphysical books after breaking with Williams, including One Thing Only and The Christian Mystery, and a detailed study of Canterbury Cathedral, but many will agree that her most impressive writings were autobiographical -- including several volumes about her childhood.
As a long-time friend, I corresponded with her for years right up to her death, as far as she was able. My memories of her correspond to what Grevel Lindop says. She was looking forward to death -- to her meeting with the Lord. Towards the end, through reading booklets from the Catholic Truth Society, including a biography of her beloved Pius XII, catechisms, and other books, and pastoral visits from the chaplain, she could be said to have reconverted to Catholicism. This was what she told me.
She had no interest in anything else, or in the republication of her books, although as Grevel writes Flower in a Teacup and A Time to be Born, "form one of the finest British autobiographies of the twentieth century and richly deserve to be reprinted", along with a third volume and other essays not yet published. She was sweet and intelligent to the end, and full of faith. The was no ego left. All who knew her will miss her.
| 224,826
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At a national meeting held in Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan to discuss and develop new approaches to improving children’s closed institutions, PRI’s Central Asia office agreed to draft a plan of transformation of educational services for children deprived of their liberty in the regions of Mangystau and Kyzylorda. The plan, which will be drafted with the support of international experts from Georgia, will incorporate a comprehensive approach and will have a particular focus on providing rehabilitative services, in order to help children – and their families – with their return to society. This would include a child-friendly support centre, where children and their families could access appropriate services.
The meeting was also attended by the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Children of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The project falls under a UNICEF-funded programme to strengthen child-friendly social environments in Kazakhstan.
Read the full press release about the meeting in Russian and Kazakh.
Find out more about the work of PRI’s Central Asia office.
| 224,432
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Mandated school closures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic threatened and continues to threaten the $22.8 billion K-12 foodservice industry, according to Technomic. “I feel all school nutrition professionals across the country had very little time to entirely change their meal service choices and delivery options, and we all stepped up to the plate because it’s about feeding children,” says Annette Hendrickx Derouin, director of food and nutrition services for Wilmar, New London-Spicer, Montevideo and Community Christian Schools in Minnesota. Though feeding students through closures is top of mind for K-12 operators in the short term, the continued need for safety as schools reopen will shape operations in the long term, as well.
The Growth Forecast
Industry experts anticipate a decrease in growth. “As of April 14, 2020, we forecast that primary and secondary schools will experience anywhere from a 22% to 27% decline in real—versus nominal—growth depending on how the pandemic unfolds,” says Anne Mills, senior manager of consumer insights at Technomic. A May 2020 survey conducted by the School Nutrition Association asked school nutrition professionals to estimate their financial losses for the 2019-2020 school year; the median estimated loss was $200,000. When isolating just the responses of larger districts with 25,000 or more students, the median estimated loss was $2.35 million.
To feed students who rely on free or reducedprice meals during closures, many schools shifted their service models to provide curbside meal pickup from mid-March until the end of the school year in May. Because many provided a week’s worth of meals in one pickup to reduce contact, additional cooler and freezer space became an immediate need. Some schools repurposed existing milk coolers or rented refrigerated trucks, says SNA spokesperson Diane Pratt-Heavner.
Districts that have a low volume of students receiving free and reduced-price meals—and therefore rely on a la carte purchases to drive sales—have been especially hard hit, revenue-wise, Pratt-Heavner adds.
Trends + Innovations
» Incorporating more ethnically diverse dishes, from-scratch recipes and “cleaner” ingredients are recent trends that are least affected by COVID-19; however, the recent trend of self-service stations and food court-style feeding will likely reverse, says Gina Brinegar, FCSI, managing principal of Webb Foodservice Design, an Anaheim, Calif.-based consulting firm that works with K-12 schools. If lunch moves to the classroom—per draft guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—Brinegar says she envisions using serving spaces as staging areas for carts and kiosks. “We will see more mobile and flexible pieces of equipment that can be taken around campus,” she says. Schools may have to return to the trend of prepackaged meals, which could drive an increase in central kitchens, she adds.
» Schools may convert self-serve operations such as salad bars into grab-and-go stations, says Aaron Smith, director of nutrition services for Seattle Public Schools. “A student won’t be grabbing tongs and touching everything, but you would grab your container and put it on your tray,” Smith says.
» To reduce crowding, schools may need to add more serving lines in alternate spaces such as gyms. “We currently have three main serving lines in our high school and we likely will not want 400 students all coming in at one time for their meals, so we should be the ones to spread out with our serving carts for them,” says Gay Anderson, child nutrition director for Brandon Valley School District in Brandon, S.D., and SNA president. Technology also may change to eliminate points of contact. “Since we currently have touch for our POS with biometrics, we are going to go touchless with scanners,” Anderson says. “Scan a barcode and there isn’t any concern with spreading germs, as we don’t touch the student ID and they don’t touch the scanner.”
of districts offered customizable menu options pre-pandemic, with the most common option being a salad bar or made-to-order salad.1
of districts served menu options with a cleaner label (ingredients or products with no artificial preservatives, colors or flavors) in the 2018-2019 school year.1
of students qualify for free meals or reduced-price meals in any given district.1
of school districts surveyed offered drive-thru meal pickup sites during pandemic-related school closures.2
of school districts surveyed by SNA said financial losses were a moderate or serious concern. 2
1The School Nutrition Association’s 2019 School Nutrition Trends Report
2The School Nutrition Association’s May 2020 COVID-19 closure survey
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Only wash as needed. Not only will you save water and detergent, but your clothes will last way longer. Next time you don’t do laundry in a while, you’re not being lazy, you’re just being a super good person.
Skip the dryer. Normal tumble dryers emit 40 million tons of CO2e in the US each year¹. It’s way better to air or line dry–plus hanging your clothes to dry looks super chic.
When you do the wash, set your washer to “cold” to save energy and help your clothes live a little longer (heat can break fibers down). Also, switching from hot water to cold or warm every four out of five loads would save 864 pounds of CO2 per year². That’s the same as driving 1,000 miles, which is a really long road trip.
Use spot cleaner. If it’s only dirty in one teeny place, exercise that spot cleaner.
For denim consider bagging and putting it in the freezer for a day or two–this will kill bacteria and odors, keep your jeans in better shape and is just a chill way to do laundry that your science teacher would have loved.
The first step to making your shoes last is proper care. Before wearing them for the first time, we recommend spraying your shoes with an eco-friendly spray (like Jak Magic Spray) that will protect them from things like water, oil, and dust. Be sure to reapply the spray every few months. When storing your shoes, it is best to keep them in a cool, dry environment. Also, polishing your leather shoes works well to keep them looking practically new. Check out our FAQs for additional shoe care information.
When you machine wash anything made from synthetics—even recycled stuff—it sheds tiny bits of plastic called microfibers, which contribute to plastic pollution of our waterways. Clean up your act by hand washing your stuff in cold water—especially swimwear and activewear. You can also use a Guppyfriend bag to capture microfibers when you hand or machine wash your stuff. They’re available right here on our website.
Some professional cleaners now offer green dry cleaning that use water as the primary solvent. This type of cleaning can substantially reduce toxicity and CO2 emissions associated with garment care.
The primary chemical solvent used in dry-cleaning, perchloroethylene (or perc), is a toxic chemical capable of causing liver damage and respiratory failure. Yikes. It can also lead to groundwater contamination and air pollution. So even if your cleaners advertise as “green” or “organic,” be sure to ask if they use perc, hydrocarbons, or D-5 cleaners, and be sure to avoid the toxic stuff. Just say no to perc. Check out our garment care guide for truly green cleaners near our stores.
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Along the Grapevine
|2017 Flooded Orchards and Vineyards News Extra||4/14/17|
|Meeting Notice: 65th ANNUAL LODI GRAPE DAY||
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Hutchins Street Square, Lodi, California
|sharing a Meeting Notice from the Almond Digest||1/21/16|
|MEETING NOTICE: 64TH ANNUAL LODI GRAPE DAY||
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Hutchins Street Square, Lodi CA
|MEETING NOTICE: Vineyard Herbicide Trial Field Meeting||
Vineyard Herbicide Trial Field Meeting
UC Cooperative Extension Weed Science Advisor, John Roncoroni, will show and discuss the in-field results of an herbicide trial and the options available to grape growers for weed control.
There will be a discussion of proper usage, rates and precautions of newly registered herbicides for vineyard use.
CE units have been requested. No charge for this meeting. No RSVP required.
To view or download map, directions and more info, click the link below.
|Meeting Notice 63rd Annual Lodi Grape Day||1/15/15|
|UC Davis Viticulture & Enology On-the-Road in Lodi||3/28/14|
|Cold and Dry Thoughts for 2014||1/30/14|
|62nd ANNUAL LODI GRAPE DAY||
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2014
|Pancake Breakfast and Healthcare Reform for Ag Employers Update||PUB||12/16/13|
|Wood-Canker Disease Management Survey||
This is a request to participate in an online survey about management of wood-canker disease in grape, pistachio and almond.
*Grapevine Red Blotch Disease Webinar
*Grapevine Red Blotch Disease Fact Sheet
*UC Davis Viticulture & Enology On-the-Road in Lodi"
|60th Annual Lodi Grape Day||
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
|March 2010 Along The Grapevine||*Chilling Hours and Rainfall *Budbreak *Spring Frost *Weeds||7/26/10|
|58th Annual Lodi Grape Day||Tuesday, February 2, 2010||7/26/10|
|57th Annual Lodi Grape Day||Tuesday, February 3, 2009||7/26/10|
|Cost Study 2008 - Crush District 11 (Lodi Winegrape Commission)||Wednesday, August 13, 2008 LDGGA Update of Efforts & Concerns||7/26/10|
|Lodi Regional Research Roadshow||Wednesday, May 28, 2008||7/26/10|
|56th Annual Lodi Grape Day||Tuesday, February 5, 2008||7/26/10|
|55th Annual Lodi Grape Day||Tuesday, February 6, 2007||7/26/10|
|54th Annual Lodi Grape Day||Tuesday, February 7, 2006||7/26/10|
|53rd Annual Grape Day||Tuesday, February 1, 2005||7/26/10|
|July 2004||Winegrape Irrigation Update; Review on Irrigation Scheduling for Winegrapes; Problems with the Lodi CIMIS Station; On the Lookout||7/26/10|
|February 2004||52nd Annual Lodi Grape Day - February 3, 2004||7/26/10|
|July 2003||Field Meeting: How to Prevent Spread of Vine Mealybug During Grape Harvesting||7/26/10|
|April 2003||Vine Mealy Bug Update Meeting, May 14, 2003||7/26/10|
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BY ROXANNE MITCHELL, ALYSHA WAGLEY AND SAMANTHA NELSON / N.M. TEACHERS AND CO-FOUNDERS, EDUCATORS ELEVATING NEW MEXICO
Sunday, September 1, 2019 at 12:02am
As dedicated teachers in New Mexico’s rural communities, we’ve often been discouraged by politicians wildly swinging the education pendulum at our students’ expense. Talk to other teachers with over 10 years of experience and they will tell stories of oft-switched policies that don’t fully consider the impact on classrooms.
This time around, we as teacher leaders begged for a smooth transition between administrations.
The past nine months have been the most unstable of our careers.
The uneasy feeling started in 2018 with then-Secretary Christopher Ruszkowski attempting to reassure us at various teacher leadership meetings across the state. He shared that the new administration, whomever they were, would inherit a $1 billion surplus, the nation’s top-rated state plan and a strong team. He outlined how New Mexico had drawn on input from thousands of diverse stakeholders, empirical research and the best ideas from both parties over the past two decades, while also seeding forward-looking innovative programs.
We also learned that both gubernatorial candidates had voted for President Obama’s Every Student Succeeds Act, and how New Mexico’s Legislative Finance and Education Committees had consistently built a stronger education system over the past three decades. Further, we heard from several state leaders that the Yazzie/Martinez ruling required the state’s collective leadership to move education forward, not revert backward.
Later we heard that Ruszkowski’s leadership team, mostly Democrats, had spent countless hours with the new governor’s transition team – explaining the momentum that districts like ours and many others were achieving with students.
A smooth transition seemed possible.
However, disarray ensued. By the fourth day of January, our governor had publicly declared that “everything must go” without any plan to replace systems that guide instruction and create accountability. There was no new secretary appointed until late January. Then, the new “Dream Team” at the Public Education Department spent several months hastily compiling amendments to our top-rated state plan that could aptly be called “everything must go, part two.”
Now, some of those leaders are gone, too.
Back home in our rural schools, the policies and programs that worked for our students were being dismantled – or so we were told. Most of them are still partially here. New proposals remain incomplete and unclear as another school year begins.
The educator pay raise was important – and we are deeply thankful to our taxpayers and elected leaders for it. We are reflective practitioners who work hard to improve our students’ learning, constantly on a quest to achieve objective, measurable and immeasurable results.
But now it’s August. And right now we have no idea how our students, our teaching, or our school will be assessed. There is a cloud of uncertainty over everything.
And it’s not just us that feel this way. Here are some questions we’ve been asked by our students, families and colleagues:
“Do I still need to pass an assessment in reading and math to graduate high school? Which one?”
“Are we no longer assessing ninth-graders annually?”
“Is the SAT/ACT a culturally relevant assessment?”
“Will schools excelling and growing be celebrated?”
“Will chronically failing schools still be identified and asked to change?”
“Will we all have to come to school in the summer?”
So far, there are no solid answers to these questions.
Perhaps now, there is hope again. We welcome Secretary-designate Ryan Stewart to New Mexico and implore him to please hit pause on the system upheavals in progress. Instead, spend six months traveling the state and listening to stories of progress, approaching our state from an asset-based perspective. Collaborate with educators and communities representing ALL 89 districts and ALL 90-plus charter schools.
New Mexico cannot afford another wild pendulum swing; it will take courageous leadership to prevent it. We must instead build upon bipartisan decades of progress, invest in teachers and student services, build community schools, and maintain high expectations and transparent academic accountability for all. This is the path forward for our kids.
Roxanne Mitchell teaches elementary school in Clovis, Alysha Wagley teaches high school in Animas and Samantha Nelson teaches elementary school in Farmington.
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The FCC Technician Exam (Element 2) consists of 35 questions, you are required to get over 75% (26 out of 35) for a passing grade. There are 10 subelements, T0-T9, and the full exam consists of questions from each subelement (and from each of the topic groups within each subelement). You can use the checkboxes below to include some or all of the subelements in your practice exam.
Current Question Pool: 424 Questions, Effective July 1, 2022 - June 30th 2026
Technician Exam Subelements
The technician exam has questions that cover the following topics (subelements)
- T0: Electrical and RF Safety
- T1: FCC Rules, station license responsibilities
- T2: Control operator duties
- T3: Operating practices
- T4: Radio and electronic fundamentals
- T5: Station setup and operation
- T6: Communications modes and methods
- T7: Special operations
- T8: Emergency and Public Service Communications
- T9: Radio waves, propagation, and antennas
Recommended Supporting Materials
The exam prep provided here is great for practicing to pass the exam. That being said, I would also strongly recommend that you strive to understand the broader theory and practical applications that lie behind the questions. This will make answering the exam questions easier in the short term but perhaps more importantly will enable you to get more from the hobby once you are on the air. To that end I’ve listed below a few popular books that might be of help to you. The ARRL Ham Radio License manual gets consistently excellent reviews on Amazon and provides a great introduction to the theory and materials you’ll need to know, plus it introduces the relevant exam questions as you work through the chapters. The Gordon West (W5YI) Technician Manual works a little differently, covering each question with detailed explanations of the possible answers. This has less introductory material and background than the ARRL book so would be a good test prep review book and a good complement to the ARRL manual, however, perhaps not the best single book to get if this is your first introduction to the hobby.
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A Government minister was upbraided yesterday for using the phrase "nitty gritty" at a police conference. Its use is prohibited in the Metropolitan Police because it supposedly has racist overtones dating back to the days of slavery.
During a discussion at the annual conference of the Police Federation, John Denham, the police minister, said that it was time to "get down to the nitty gritty" on training of officers.
His comment immediately brought a rebuke from Pc Chris Jefford of the Met's Directorate of Training. He told the minister: "As a serving police officer, if I used the term nitty gritty, which you used a moment ago, in our modern politically correct society I would be facing a discipline charge.
"Nitty gritty is a prohibited term in the modern police service as being a racist term."
A number of delegates mentioned the word "slavery". Mr Jefford said police had been told "nitty gritty" was thought to have been a term used to describe slaves in the lowest reaches of slave ships.
Mr Denham, clearly surprised, said: "I wasn't aware of that. It does show there are phrases in our language that we are not aware of."
Officers experienced on discipline cases said later that officers faced a "minefield" of political correctness, with a constantly changing, often subjective view of what was offensive.
Other apparently innocuous phrases now frowned on in the Metropolitan Police - which was accused of "institutional racism" in the Macpherson inquiry into the bungled Stephen Lawrence case - are "egg and spoon" and "good egg".
Egg and spoon is deemed to be a rhyming slang term suggesting "coon" - a racially offensive phrase used towards black people - and good egg is said to be linked to it.
Other phrases that have drawn criticism, if not disciplinary charges, included "pikey", which is used in relation to travellers.
One officer of 30 years' service, who was cleared at a discipline hearing of sexist behaviour, is said to have been strongly criticised for referring to women officers as "WPcs" in his evidence.
He was told the Met no longer used the phrase: all officers were Pcs. "Spanish practices", a slang term for restrictive work practices, is said to be potentially offensive.
Another, more obscure phrase understood to form the basis of one disciplinary allegation, is "bean flicker" - a phrase apparently used in relation to lesbians.
A Police Federation representative, David Nixon, a constable in Camden, north London, who has long experience of discipline cases, said he had dealt with several where officers have been accused of breaching the police code on "politeness and tolerance" by using apparently innocuous words.
There was no formal list of banned words, he said, which created a "hugely problematic area."
"You can find officers in trouble through no awareness that they were doing something wrong. It makes them over-cautious and inhibited.
"Policemen are treading into minefields because we have a discipline system that will automatically look at complaints like this. Nobody knows what the standard is and so you just don't know the rules.
"There needs to be a more tolerant and more realistic attitude towards language," he said. Scotland Yard said last night: "We have no knowledge of any disciplinary actions against any officer for using those phrases - nitty gritty, egg and spoon and good egg.
"But officers are advised to be sensitive in their use of language as some terms and phrases can cause offence."
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Think C Shell for XCMDs
Incorporating XCMDs into your application without alteration
By Gerry H. Kenner, Magna, Utah
Note: Source code files accompanying article are located on MacTech CD-ROM or source code disks.
About the author
Gerry Kenner is a professional electrical and computer engineering consultant, university researcher and sometimes writer who specializes in image analysis systems for investigative scientists.
Recently, I submitted an article to MacTech Magazine entitled Three Subclasses for Screen Input/Output in which I described the creation of three THINK C classes which I use as general utilities when developing applications. These classes were named BGetTCLInfo, BDisplayDoc and BBitMapDoc whose functions were to ask for data input, output data and output bitmap dumps respectively. In this article, I am going to show how BGetTCLInfo and BDisplayDoc can be used for development of XCMDs. The use of two other classes, BEditDoc and BEditPane will also be demonstrated.
The idea is to write XCMDs in such a way that they can be incorporated in either THINK C application or code resource projects without alteration. The XCMD can be written in standard C or it can be object oriented. Once incorporated into a THINK C object oriented application shell, standard debugging techniques can be used to follow the execution of the code.
The code resource project consists of the standard main function for interfacing with HyperCard. This function then calls the code for the XCMD which is in a separate file.
The application project is somewhat more complicated in that it initially creates an object of class BGetTCLInfo for getting whatever information is needed by the XCMD, puts it in HyperCard usable form, executes the XCMD code and then uses a BDisplayDoc object to pass the results back to the programmer.
If the programmer wants to use HyperTalk utility functions, he must create a code file named something like HyperUtil.c (or HyperXcmd.c for that matter) and provide alternate source code for any functions called. I have not done this because I feel that HyperTalk utilities should be avoided in favor of THINK C library functions or SANE toolbox calls.
I havent had occasion to try it but programming windoids may be a problem.
Descriptions of the classes BGetTCLInfo, BDisplayDoc, BEditDoc and BEditPane are not included in this article. The reader will need to obtain the February, 1993 issue (page 18) of MacTech Magazine in which they are described and/or purchase a copy of the MacTech Magazine disk for this issue to get the source code. [Or you can download it from one of the online services. - Ed.]
As in my previous article, I am only including the code necessary to understand the project. This code is enough for an intermediate programmer to fill in what is missing. Typically, I do not declare variables or state which header files must be included. A copy of the complete project is available on the MacTech Magazine disk.
CODE RESOURCE PROJECT
This is a regular code resource with the difference that code resource specific code is included in the main function while a call is made to the XCMD code which is in a separate file. In this example the code necessary for setting up A4 addressing will not execute properly in a standalone application so it executed in the main function of the XCMD.
Create a new project named Flash.Π and two empty code files named FlashXCMD.c and Flash.c. Incorporate these files as well as the libraries ANSI-A4 and MacTraps into the project. Flash.c will contain the XCMD code that is common to both the code resource project and the application project. FlashXCMD.c will contain the main function of the Flash code resource.
Set up the project to build a code resource named FlashXCMD of type XCMD with a resource number such as 30.
The code of the main function is as follows:
/* 1 */
pascal void main(XCmdPtr pp)
RememberA0(); //Setup and save register A4
RememberA0 and SetUpA4 set up A4 addressing while RestoreA4 removes it. FlashMain is a call to the XCMD code. For the above code to compile, it is necessary to #include the files SetUpA4.h and Flash.h.
FlashMain is part of a file named Flash.c. It contains code for flashing the screen and beeping the number of times the user specifies in the HyperCard stack where the XCMD is called. It then returns this number to HyperCard. Its code is as follows. This method is based on a HyperCard XCMD demonstration program originally written by Apple Computer.
/* 2 */
pascal void FlashMain(XCmdPtr paramPtr)
Str255 str, tempStr;
// First param is flash count.
// Convert it to a pascal string
returnHdl = NewHandle(256L);
(char*)*(unsigned char **)paramPtr->params);
// Convert the string to a number
// Invert the screen and sound the beep.
for (again = 0; again < flashCount; again++)
// Build the return string.
strcpy((char*)tempStr, The number of flashes was );
paramPtr->returnValue = returnHdl;
Short, brief and simple as an example should be. The only other thing you need to know is that Flash.h contains the prototype declaration of the function FlashMain and #includes HyperXCmd.h.
Create a HyperCard stack named Flash Stack with one button which contains the following script.
/* 3 */
put FlashXCMD(5) into msg
Compile the code resource and merge it with the above stack. Run the XCMD to confirm that it is functional.
The purpose of this object oriented code is to provide a dialog box asking for input, convert it to a HyperCard usable format, call the XCMD code and then display return information.
The easiest way to get the necessary project is to make a copy of THINK Cs Starter Project, compile it and then make the appropriate name changes, i.e., Starter.Π to FlashObject.Π, Starter.c to FlashObject.c, StarterApp.c to flApp.c, etc. Remove the StarterDoc and StarterPane classes from the project and eliminate any references to them as they are not necessary. In the StarterApp files change all instances of the prefix Starter with fl. Add all the dialog box classes. Add CButton, CCheckBox, CIconPane, CRadioControl and CRadioGroupPane of the control classes. The ANSI and SANE libraries will be required before the project is finished. Finally, add Flash.c from above to the project.
In this case, the main function will look something like this when the changes have been made.
/* 4 */
theApp = new flApp;
The flApp object is entered via the XcmdRun method to avoid complications which would result from overriding the Run method of the CApplication class.
In the flApp class, the methods CreateDocument and OpenDocument must be overridden to become donothing methods or else removed entirely. This is to prevent the creation of unwanted windows.
Four new methods need to be added to the flApp class. These are named XcmdRun, GetParams, FillParamPtr and DumpData. They have the following functions.
XcmdRun Access method. Launch XCMD.
GetParams Get input parameters.
FillParamPtr Convert input parameters to HyperCard readable form.
DumpData Dump results to a window.
XcmdRun gets the input, sends it out for conversion, calls the XCMD and then outputs the result. Its code is as follows.
/* 5 */
paramPtr = (XCmdPtr)NewPtr(136L); // Size of XCmdBlock.
// A real program would dispose of paramPtr and its handles
// at this point.
The parameter data is input by creating an object of class BGetTCLInfo which displays a dialog box containing an edit text box into which information can be entered. The format used for entering the information is First set of data,Second set of data, etc just as is done in HyperCard scripts. In the case of our example, we would enter something like 3. By enclosing it between quotes just about anything including 32k text files can be read in this way.
/* 6 */
void flApp::GetParams(char *paramStr)
#define DLOGinfo601 // Resource ID for DLOG template
BGetTCLInfo*theDocument = NULL;
SetRect(&boxDescription, 20, 20, 260, 60);
theDocument = new(BGetTCLInfo);
theDocument->GetInfo(Number of flashs, paramStr);
The FillParamPtr method is a conversion routine which takes data input in the format given above and creates handles pointing to the text between each pair of quotation marks.
/* 7 */
void flApp::FillParamPtr(XCmdPtr paramPtr, char *paramStr)
short count = 0;
char *tempPtr, *tokenPtr;
tempPtr = paramStr;
while (*tempPtr != 0x00)
tokenPtr = (char*)&tokenStr;
if (*tempPtr == 0x22)
while (*tempPtr != 0x22)
*tokenPtr = *tempPtr;
if (*tempPtr == 0x2C)
while (*tempPtr != 0x2C)
*tokenPtr = *tempPtr;
*tokenPtr = 0x00;
theLength = strlen(tokenStr);
paramPtr->params[count] = NewHandle(theLength + 1);
paramPtr->paramCount = count;
FlashMain was listed above as part of the code resource project. It is found in the Flash.c file.
Once the program has returned from the FlashMain call, the DumpData method is called to create an output window displaying the data returned by the XCMD code. This is done by creating an object of class BDumpData. The code is as follows.
/* 8 */
void flApp::DumpData(Handle theData)
theOutput = new BDisplayOutput;
Use the above listings to add the methods to the flApp.c file. Add the following #include statements.
/* 9 */
Make the appropriate changes in the flApp.h file and add #include HyperXCmd.h. Add BGetTCLInfo.c, BDisplayOutput.c, BEditDoc.c and BEditPane.c to the project. Add the DLOG and DITL resources listed below to the resource file. Compile and do whatever additional tweaking is necessary. One of the tweaks will be to increase the project memory to about 500k if it hasnt already been done.
DLOG and DITL resources numbered 601 must be added to provide a template for the prompt dialog box. This consists of an OK button centered at the bottom, one line of static text at the top with a large edit text box in between. The exact size and layout of the resource are determined by programmer tastes and requirements.
When the project is run, a dialog box will appear soliciting user input. Type in a number in quotation marks such as 5 just as it would appear in the parameter list for a Hypercard call. The computer will then beep for the listed number of times but will not flash. Finally, a window will appear with the message The number of flashes was 5. Although interesting, I did not consider it worth the effort for this paper to determine why the screen did not flash on a Power Book 100.
I have been using this system for over a year. The principle advantages over using compiler statements to alternate between creating XCMDs and applications is that readability is not sacrificed and the input/output capabilities make it easy to keep track of what is going on.
I can be reached on internet at firstname.lastname@example.org and AppleLink at UUTL.
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Time recently pondered whether “Pediatricians Should Discuss ‘Facebook Depression’ with Kids.” Young people shouldn’t be surprised, apparently, if the subject of Facebook comes up at their next physical. The idea of “Facebook depression,” which appears to be the idea that some socially isolated young people get depressed after extensive contact with social media, has become so widespread that The American Academy for Pediatrics (AAP) released guidelines that urge parents to ask more social media-related questions in order to assess the mental and emotional health of young people.
You might be wondering, how could Facebook be the source of a public health dilemma? Gwenn O’Keeffe, co-author of the report that lead to AAP’s new guidelines and a pediatrician outside Boston, maintains that the digital world that young people now live in is one of the primary outlets that influence their social and emotional development. This is when broader issues like concern over sexting and cyberbullying come into play.
Constantly seeing updates from their peers online can make young people feel even more isolated and ostracized before the dawn of social media. O’Keeffe is calling for parents and pediatricians to focus more education and attention to teaching our youth about how to handle social networking sites correctly.
There is definitely something to be said about the negative effects of technology on development; however, with every innovation you have to take the cons along with the pros. For many young people, Facebook has proven to be a successful social outlet for them to develop their friendships even further, and yet for some it has proved to be a burden on this development.
The key is always moderation. Carrots might be good for you, but if you eat too many, you might also turn orange. 14-year old Vivian realizes this and discusses it in her blog post, The Pros and Cons of Facebook. A similar discussion posted on CBS news describes “Facebook depression” risk in more detail, highlighting that, “Researchers disagree on whether [Facebook] is simply an extension of depression some kids feel in other circumstances, or a distinct condition linked with using the online site.”
With changing technology, we must accept the risks with the potential rewards, and with social networking, there are a lot of benefits to reap. O’Keeffe’s concerns that the role of technology can have an effect on the mental and social health of young people are valid, but there is a major gap in the attitude between parents and children toward social networking sites like Facebook. Parents more often have an overwhelmingly negative attitude about social networking, sometimes because parents don’t understand how it works. Such an attitude doesn’t help young people in learning how to effectively navigate the digital world.
This post was originally published by Campus Progress.
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
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"There was a lot more to this trip than just hunting."
Read an account from Lonnie Young, Wounded Warrior, about his experiences at Camp Hackett.
Camp Hackett consists of 410 bountiful acres of land located in northern Wisconsin, which is approximately 20 miles from the town of Phillips, Wisconsin located in Price County.
Here's what Camp Hackett offers:
- Trophy whitetail bow hunts.
- The WWIA provides guided Ruffed Grouse hunts (pointing and flushing dogs provided). Price county Wisconsin is the Ruffed Grouse capital of the world and the population of this highly sought after game bird is thriving on Camp Hackett.
- Guided waterfowl hunts (ducks and geese), waterdog provided.
- Guided turkey hunts available: A cadre of expert turkey callers stand ready to support your hunt.
- Private Ring Neck Pheasant hunts.
- Guided Muskie, Pike, and Walleye fishing available.
- Quality Deer Management (QDM) program strictly enforced.
- 3D archery practice and qualification range.
Phillips, WI has a population of 1675. Many local merchants have pledged their support for WWIA activities, including the local Post 50 AMVETS.
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SAN FRANCISCO — A Superior Court judge on Thursday overturned San Francisco's landmark video display terminal safety ordinance, the only law in the United States that required private companies to protect workers from the muscle-straining dangers of VDT work by providing rest breaks and properly designed office furniture.
Judge Lucy Kelly McCabe, ruling in favor of two small data processing companies, held that California's 1973 Occupational Safety and Health Act preempted the San Francisco ordinance, which required periodic rest breaks and properly designed office furniture for anyone who spent four hours a day or more at a VDT.
The ruling left business representatives greatly relieved and worker safety advocates bitterly disappointed.
Proponents had agreed in 1990 to significantly weaken the law in order to quell opposition from major business interests, which warned that the law might cost them tens of millions of dollars. The coalition of unions and work-safety groups that lobbied for years to pass the law contended that the notion of state preemption was irrelevant because the state's Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) has for years resisted any regulation of VDTs.
Both the city and other groups that supported the law are expected to appeal Thursday's ruling.
Los Angeles city officials, considering their own VDT law, have been warned by the city attorney's office that state preemption would likely kill it.
San Francisco's law was watched carefully by health and business experts concerned with the mounting problem of "repetitive strain" illnesses that have plagued workers and employers during the past decade as the use of VDTs and other computerized devices speeded up the pace of labor in offices and factories.
An article in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Assn. said workplace repetitive strain illnesses are rising at an alarming rate and will continue to jeopardize a broad spectrum of workers until businesses and the medical community respond.
Cases of occupational illnesses due to repetitive strain increased from 45,000 in 1986 to 185,000 in 1990, the most recent year for which federal data is available. Among American office workers, the rate of those illnesses more than doubled between 1989 and 1990.
Both the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Cal/OSHA are in the early stages of developing regulations that would force employers to be more sensitive to the science of ergonomics--the chairs, tables and tools and body posture a worker uses. However, sluggishness by both agencies during the past several years encouraged municipalities such as San Francisco to pass their own laws. A similar law passed in Suffolk County, N.Y., was overturned in court several years ago.
In opposing the San Francisco law, businesses argued that they should not have to adjust to a variety of such laws in various jurisdictions, and called for uniform state or federal standards.
Seth J. Gersch, managing director of Montgomery Securities, a San Francisco brokerage firm, said Thursday that the city's ordinance "placed San Francisco in a poor light" with businesses and threatened to drive away national companies that otherwise might consider the city as a base. The city, known for its slow-growth provisions, steep office rents and high taxes, is already widely viewed as being anti-business.
The law applied to businesses with 15 or more employees. Employers were required to provide adjustable chairs and video terminals with detachable keyboards. In addition, workers were to be given 15-minute breaks or be transferred to other work for 15 minutes after every two hours of work on a computer terminal.
To lessen the opposition of the business community, compliance with the ordinance was to be staggered.
The first phase, which took effect less than three weeks ago, required newly purchased equipment to meet ergonomic standards. Beginning in mid-1993, employers would have been required to spend up to $250 per existing workstation to comply with the standards. Full compliance would have been required by 1995.
While major businesses appeared pacified, two smaller firms, C&T Management Services Inc. and Zack Electronics Inc., sued the city last fall. Larger firms, including IBM, helped pay the plaintiffs' legal fees.
Work-safety advocates said they now hope to move the fight over VDT regulations out of the courtroom by supporting a bill in the Legislature that would impose statewide standards similar to the San Francisco ordinance.
The bill, authored by Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), has passed the Assembly and is awaiting a Senate floor vote. However, if passed it would likely face a veto by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who has often railed against legislation that increases the costs of California businesses.
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The chart below shows everything you need to know about why the United Kingdom is a fiscal disaster. Over the past 10 years, the burden of government spending has skyrocketed from 36.6 percent of GDP to more than 53 percent of GDP. Taxes, meanwhile, have remained largely unchanged, averaging about 40 percent of GDP.
Since the OECD numbers show that the fiscal crisis in the U.K. is solely the result of a bloated public sector, the obvious solution is … you guessed it, higher taxes.
There are some proposals to curtail the growth of spending, including some pay cuts for Prime Minster Cameron and other political figures, but I will be very surprised if those amount to more than window dressing. The United Kingdom, I fear, has gone past the point of no return in the journey toward becoming indistinguishable from the decrepit welfare states so common in the rest of Europe.
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Vulnerability in Internet Explorer Could Allow Remote Code Execution
Date: 27 April 2014
The purpose of this Alert is to raise awareness of a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) which could allow remote code execution. (2963983)
CCIRC is aware that Microsoft is reporting a vulnerability affecting IE 6 through IE 11. This vulnerability is a remote code execution vulnerability and Microsoft is reporting that it is being used in limited, targeted attacks.
CVE Reference: CVE-2014-1776
CCIRC recommends that organizations review Microsoft Security Advisory 2963983 and consider implementing the suggested workarounds to help mitigate the risks.
Consider installing Microsoft's Experience Mitigation Toolkit 4.1 (EMET). The Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) helps mitigate the exploitation of this vulnerability by adding additional protection layers that make the vulnerability harder to exploit.
For more information, see https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2458544
NOTE: EMET 3.0 does not mitigate this issue.
Note to Readers
In support of Public Safety's mission to build a safe and resilient Canada, CCIRC's mandate is to help ensure the security and resilience of the vital non-federal government cyber systems that underpin Canada's national security, public safety and economic prosperity. As Canada's computer security incident response team, CCIRC is Canada's national coordination centre for the prevention and mitigation of, preparedness for, response to, and recovery from cyber incidents on non-federal government systems. It does this by providing authoritative advice and support, and coordinating information sharing and incident response.
Please note, CCIRC PGP key has recently been updated.
For general information, please contact Public Safety Canada's Public Affairs division at:
Telephone: 613-944-4875 or 1-800-830-3118
- Date modified:
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After a few too many days of missed breakfasts, rushed lunches or takeaway dinners, there’s something appealing about the idea that you can pop a multivitamin and boost your depleted stores of nutrients.
Should you be looking for a multivitamin that’s tailored to your age and gender, or is that kind of product segmentation just a marketing ploy? And do you really need to take multivitamins in the first place?
The "worried well"
A young woman consults a dietitian, concerned her diet is inadequate. She says she takes a number of different multivitamin products each day because she feels they help. On closer inspection, the dietitian discovers three of the products contain B vitamin complexes, and that they are delivering 17 times the recommended dietary intake (RDI) of vitamin C.
The dietitian determines she has a perfectly adequate diet – she doesn't need to take pills as well. She’s a typical example of the "worried well", and this group – indeed Australians in general – are enthusiastic consumers of multivitamins.
Pills vs produce
"There's good evidence to suggest that if a vitamin or mineral supplement replaces a deficiency, it will be beneficial," says Dr Trent Watson, accredited practising dietitian (APD) and spokesperson for the Dietitians Association of Australia. But aside from a few specific situations or groups of people, most people who have a balanced diet have no need for supplementation.
"In the western world, even those not following such great diets are usually getting adequate nutrition, and it’s not necessary to take multivitamins for general health," says Watson.
Associate Professor Tim Crowe of Deakin University’s School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences agrees: "Most people don’t need multivitamins – particularly the 'worried well' of the population who eat reasonably well most of the time – and their money is better off spent on good food".
Taking multivitamins as a nutritional insurance policy may impact more than just your wallet. According to nutritionist Rosemary Stanton, "it may contribute to neglecting healthy food choices", and this has consequences for long-term health.
Real food has several big advantages over supplements. Whole foods contain:
- fibre and polyphenols, which can help protect against conditions such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease,
- vitamins and minerals in different forms, all of which range in their ability to be absorbed by the body (known as their bioavailability). Vitamin E occurs in nature in eight different forms, for example, but supplements usually contain just one,
- a host of other substances that help vitamins and minerals be absorbed by the body and do their job inside cells.
Supplements: who needs them?
Specific vitamin and mineral supplements may be beneficial for the following groups of people, but bear in mind that individual requirements vary and it’s best to get advice from a health professional before self-prescribing.
- Pregnant women and those trying to conceive (one month prior to conception and three months after): Folate (see pregnancy supplements for more information).
- People with limited exposure to sunlight such as institutionalised or bedbound elderly, dark-skinned people and veiled women: Vitamin D.
- People on a strict vegan diet and the frail aged who may be eating poorly and/or absorbing less from their food: Vitamin B12.
- People on restrictive diets (including those with eating disorders, food allergies or intolerances and those on low-kilojoule weight-loss diets): supplement depends on the nature of the diet.
People of different genders and ages do require more or less of certain nutrients according to their varying body sizes, metabolism rates, activity levels and food intake levels. Adult women, for example, require more iron than men up to the age of 50, and as both men and women get older their vitamin D needs tend to increase.
"The government’s RDIs for each vitamin and mineral are set out by gender and age, and manufacturers are mirroring these RDIs in their formulations. This is a good thing," says Crowe.
But in some cases, the fragmentation is more about marketing than genuine need. For example, there are numerous small differences in nutrient levels between Swisse Women’s Ultivite 50+ and 65+ formulas, but in reality the RDIs for most nutrients are the same for women at both ages. And both the boys’ and girls' Bioglan Kids Gummies Multivitamins products are identical – it just depends on whether you want packaging featuring Disney princesses or characters from the movie, Cars.
Can you overdose on vitamins?
There are situations when multivitamins might not always be safe. There’s some evidence that high levels of iron supplements prescribed to pregnant and lactating women may decrease zinc absorption.
"A leading cause of poisoning in children is iron poisoning," says Crowe. "While the quantity in one multivitamin tablet is perfectly safe, if a kid thinks they’re lollies and eats the whole packet then there’s the potential for harm."
According to Watson, 'the law of toxicology suggests that anything in the right doses can be toxic. There’s an increasing body of evidence that suggests large doses of vitamin A increases the risk of lung cancer, for example."
If you're taking vitamin or mineral supplements or natural or herbal remedies along with prescribed medicine, it's also important to be aware of possible interactive effects.
Little pill, big promises
Although over-consumption of certain vitamins or minerals can be dangerous, ingredients are generally at such low doses in a multivitamin it’s harder for them to be over-consumed and cause damage.
'There’s only so much of each nutrient you can pack into a multivitamin pill – in that way they’re self-limiting – and often it’s not even close to the recommended dietary intake (RDI)," says Crowe. "Taken as directed there’s little chance of harm as a dose is unlikely to contain levels of nutrients above the recommended upper level of intake."
In fact, the dose of an individual vitamin or mineral in a multivitamin may be so low as to render it useless. For example, a dose of glucosamine sulfate – a substance thought by some to help relieve the pain of osteoarthritis – is typically 1500mg in clinical trials. Nature’s Own Mega Potency 50+ Years Multivitamin contains just 100mg.
To complicate matters, it’s very difficult for a lay-person to know what they’re getting in a multivitamin and to compare products.
Vitamins are listed under their vitamin name on some bottles (e.g. vitamin B3) and their chemical name (e.g. niacin) on others. Different brands produce the same basic supplement from different compounds, any of which may appear on the bottle. For instance, calcium can be derived from calcium phosphate, calcium pantothenate, calcium ascorbate, calcium carbonate or calcium orotate (amongst others).
Some companies list the weight of the ingredient (which could be a compound), while others state the vitamin or mineral equivalent of that ingredient. And manufacturers of products sold in Australia don’t need to list how much of each ingredient relates to a recommended dietary intake (RDI).
Vitamins and minerals: how much and which foods?
Aside from a few specific situations or groups of people, most people can fulfill their vitamin and mineral requirements by eating a healthy, balanced diet.
To check the RDI of all macronutrients (protein, fat, carbohydrate, fibre) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) for your gender and age, use the NHMRC's Nutrients & Dietary Energy Calculator.
For a summary of key vitamins and minerals, their function in the human body and the best dietary sources, see this table.
Multivitamins for kids
It’s particularly important for parents to provide a healthy selection of foods for their children rather than give them a multivitamin to cover up for possible nutritional shortfalls. Stanton stresses that it’s not OK for kids to eat junk just because they’re getting multivitamins: "A recent study of Australian preschoolers found that 31% were overweight or obese, and their diets lacked fibre and had too much saturated fat – problems that a multivitamin won’t fix."
"Don’t offer something that will distract from consumption of real food," says Watson. "Children become consumers of everything you serve them eventually, so it’s worth persisting with good food."
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Definitions for upsetter
This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word upsetter
Random House Webster's College Dictionary
up•setʌpˈsɛt; ˈʌpˌsɛt(v., adj.; n.; v.; adj.)-set, -set•ting
to upset a glass of milk.
to disturb mentally or emotionally; distress:
The accident upset her.
to disturb completely; throw into disorder:
to upset a plan.
to disturb physically.
to defeat (an opponent that is favored), as in politics or sports.
(v.i.)to become upset or overturned.
(n.)an upsetting or instance of being upset; overturn; overthrow.
the unexpected defeat of an opponent that is favored.
a nervous, irritable state of mind.
a disturbance or disorder.
Origin of upset:
an unexpected winner; someone who defeats the favorite competitor
One who upsets (something); a disrupter.
A person or device that turns something upside down
The Upsetters was the name given to the house band for Jamaican reggae producer Lee "Scratch" Perry. The name of the band comes from Perry's nickname of Upsetter, after his song "I Am The Upsetter", a musical dismissal of his former boss Coxsone Dodd.
Find a translation for the upsetter definition in other languages:
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Creativity and Industrial Cities: A Case Study of Baltimore
Creativity is changing the way cities approach economic development and formulate policy. Creative metropolises base their economic development strategies, at least partly, on building communities attractive to the creative class worker. While there are countless examples of high-tech regions transforming into creative economies, traditionally industrial cities have received much less attention in this regard. This research draws on Baltimore to assess the potential of transforming a traditionally industrial region into a creative economy. It analyses Baltimore's performance on dimensions of talent, tolerance, technology, and territory both as a stand-alone metropolitan area and in comparison to similar industrial metropolises. Using data from the US Census Bureau and research on creativity measures, this case study concludes that Baltimore has the opportunity to capitalize on the creative economy because of its openness to diversity, established technology base, and appealing territorial amenities. An important consideration in the transformation towards a creative economy is Baltimore's geographic proximity and access to the largest reservoir of creative talent in the US: Washington, DC.
|Date of creation:||02 Jul 2007|
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Phone: +049 3641/ 9 43000
Fax: +049 3641/ 9 43000
Web page: http://www.jenecon.de
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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Timothy J. Bartik, .
"Small Business Start-Ups in the United States: Estimates of the Effects of Characteristics of States,"
Upjohn Working Papers and Journal Articles
tjb1989sej, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
- Timothy J. Bartik, 2010. "Small Business Start-Ups in the United States: Estimates of the Effects of Characteristics of States," Book chapters authored by Upjohn Institute researchers, in: Zolton Acs (ed.), Entrepreneurship and regional Development, pages 155-169 W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
- Timothy J. Bartik, 2002. "Small Business Start-Ups in the United States: Estimates of the Effects of Characteristics of States," Book chapters authored by Upjohn Institute researchers, in: Norris F. Krueger (ed.), Entrepreneurship: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management, volume 0, pages 191-210 W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
- Lucas, Robert Jr., 1988. "On the mechanics of economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-42, July.
- Richard Florida & Zoltan Acs & Sam Youl Lee, 2004.
"Creativity and Entrepreneurship: A Regional Analysis of New Firm Formation,"
Papers on Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy
2004-17, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy Group.
- Sam Youl Lee & Richard Florida & Zoltan Acs, 2004. "Creativity and Entrepreneurship: A Regional Analysis of New Firm Formation," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(8), pages 879-891.
- Blanchflower, David G. & Oswald, Andrew J., 2007.
"What Makes a Young Entrepreneur?,"
IZA Discussion Papers
3139, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
- Blanchflower, D.G. & Oswald, A., 1991.
"What Makes an Entrepreneur?,"
Economics Series Working Papers
99125, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
- Evans, David S & Leighton, Linda S, 1989. "Some Empirical Aspects of Entrepreneurship," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(3), pages 519-35, June.
- Stuart, Toby & Sorenson, Olav, 2003. "The geography of opportunity: spatial heterogeneity in founding rates and the performance of biotechnology firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 229-253, February.
- Catherine Armington & Zoltan Acs, 2002. "The Determinants of Regional Variation in New Firm Formation," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1), pages 33-45.
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2007-024. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
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If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
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After first day successes in a two-day man vs. machine poker match, Polaris, a poker-playing computer, lost both games and the challenge against two professional poker players Tuesday night.
In the first poker challenge between humans and machines involving money, Polaris, a computer project created at the University of Alberta, took on two poker pros -- Phil "The Unabomber" Laak and Ali Eslami, two successful high-stakes players. On day one, the first match ended in a draw, but in the the second, much to the surprise of the team that created Polaris, the computer soundly beat its competitors.
But on the second day of play, the human players upped their games and posted decisive wins over the computer in both matches.
Despite the setback, the Polaris creators were pleased with the computer program's performance.
"We viewed ourselves as the underdog," Jonathan Schaeffer, the head of the university's computer science department, told ABCNews.com before Tuesday's matches. "To come in yesterday and play as well as we did was just wonderful. No one really had any inkling that the program would play as well as it did."
The challenge, which took place at the conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Vancouver, pitted Eslami, Laak and the computer against one another in two matches of 500 hands of limit Texas hold 'em each day. The matches were played at the same time in separate rooms. The computer and humans were all dealt the same cards for each hand, in an attempt to unequivocally prove who played the cards better -- the computer or the professionals.
In limit hold 'em, betting is structured and players are limited in the amount of money they can bet during each hand. Players can make $10 and $20 bets, and in order for a winner to be declared the player must win by more than 25 bets.
"It's very difficult for humans," Schaeffer said. "The pots were big. There was lots of money. When you're under a lot of pressure, it creates a lot of stress."
Schaeffer admitted that Polaris doesn't feel stress. "But the programmers do," he said.
Polaris actually consists of 10 different poker-playing programs, and the team behind the project has been working since 1991 with the goal of creating a "superhuman poker-playing program." During play, an additional program known as the "coach" chose which program Polaris will use to compete and, hopefully, win.
"The best results would be a really close finish that came down to the wire," Schaeffer said on Tuesday. "It will be entertaining one way or another."
Regardless of the outcome, Schaeffer said yesterday that he believed that his team has already learned the most important lesson: Polaris is competitive.
"We had no idea where the technology stood. We're not better [than humans]. There's not enough data to suggest that," he said. "It's clear that we're competitive."
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This low noise broad band Pre-amp AT-PAA28 is designed to boost weak TV signals to compensate the signal loss of long running cable and noise of the receivers, thus increase the Singal /Noise level in the whole system, improving image quality and stability. It rejects FM signal and LTE 4G, 5G signal (600MHz up)
T-Mobile is implementing the 5G low end on band 71 (600-700Mhz), it may cause interference to reception of HDTV.
- Low noise high gain across 47-600 MHz
- Built-in FM Trap reduce FM station interference
- Built-in LTE 4G,5G 600 MHz low pass filter, no need to buy another pre-filter
- Adjustable gain control for more flexible installation
- Closure box with water proof design
- Light weight and Master attachable design, with less to no
Read Notes Before Buying Any Pre-Amps:
TV signals are very complicated and different from location to location. Do some research on TVFOOL, and get basic channel/signal information of your location before buying an pre-amp.
Scenarios and results you may get:
1. Weak signal only (You may see great results using this Pre-Amp, EASY)
If your location are far from TV stations or you can get very weak signal even by a high gain antenna. Basic setup as per instructions is sufficient.
2. Some directions have strong signals and some directions have weak signals.(You may see good results when tuning the antenna system well, EASY-ADVANCED)
Try to point the antenna (Single antenna system) to the weakest stations, in this way more weak signals and less strong signals are received in the system. If multi-antenna system is used, use higher gain antenna to get weak channels and connect to the amplifier, and low gain antenna to get strong channels without amplification. Signal combiner may be required to get best results.
3. Weak signals among lots of strong signals and are coming from the same direction(Complicated and special setup may be required to get weak channels extracted, ADVANCED)
Strong signal may overload Pre-amplifier or your TV receiver, thus losing channels that you may get without a Pre-amp.
Weak signals may have to be separated from main stream before feeding into this pre-amp, then can be combined back to the main stream. Lots of tuning and testing may be required due to complicated signal strength and frequency distributions.
In scenario 2 & 3, advanced setup skills, as well as additional components may be required to get better results.
Antra™ Warehouse Sale is committed to 100% customer satisfaction! If you are unsatisfied for any reasons, you may return your purchase within 30 days of the ship date. NO questions asked and NO restocking fees!
1. Email firstname.lastname@example.org or call 1-888-450-6788 with your order id to receive your return authorization. If the item is defective or damaged in shipping, we will issue a pre-paid return shipping label. In all other cases, buyer is responsible for return shipping and may ship back the item using the carrier of his/her choice.
2. We do not accept any returns after 30 days from ship date.
3. If you believe your package was damaged in shipping, we require that you contact us within 3 days of delivery and we will work with you to quickly resolve the issue.
4. To cancel an order, please contact Antra™ as soon as possible because we ship out orders very fast! If your order has not yet been shipped, we will immediately refund your payment. If the order has been shipped, we will refund your payment as soon as we have received the item(s) back from your and processed them at our warehouse.
5. All refund recipients will receive an email confirmation for their records.
6. Return address will be shown when you fill out the return form.
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UN Urges Iran to Stop Executing Protesters
The United Nations human rights chief urged authorities in Iran to immediately stop executing people who have been participating in the recent anti-government demonstrations and not use the death sentence to spread fear and silence the protests.
The appeal came after Teheran executed two protesters on Saturday and sentenced another three to death on Monday.
Thousands have been arrested in the wave of demonstrations across the country after a young girl who was arrested and allegedly killed in September by the morality police because she did not wear her hijab in a proper way.
Iranian courts have since then sentenced 17 people to death after sham trials with no due process under charges such as “waging war on God” or “corruption on Earth.”
“Criminal proceedings and the death penalty are being weaponized by the Iranian Government to punish individuals participating in protests and to strike fear into the population so as to stamp out dissent, in violation of international human rights law,” U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk said.
The practice “amounts to state sanctioned killing,” he added.
Still, the administration of Iran's leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not showing signs of softening its stance towards the protests. Khamenei stated on Monday on national TV that the protesters had "set fire to public places and have committed treason with no doubt." Treason is punishable with death in Iran.
Human rights activists agree that the executions are an attempt to spread fear among the population to end the unrest.
“These executions are a key component of the regime's effort to suppress protests. We continue to work with partners to pursue accountability for Iran’s brutal crackdown,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price on Twitter.
Fatemeh Aman, senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute told OCCRP that everyone who was executed so far was accused without sufficient evidence and without the presence of lawyers.
“The number of executions is not high compared with that of early 1980s massacres of protesters, and the late 1980s mass executions of political prisoners,” she said.
“The world is monitoring and watching them now, and that is the key to keeping the number relatively low. Without international condemnation and involvement, the number would have been far higher,” she added.
However, the fact that Teheran continues to hang people despite international protests, “proves that the regime will not give up the power peacefully and easily. They could make a bloodbath should they find themselves losing power,” said Aman.
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Psychologists are social scientists who study the human mind and behavior, perform research on human behavior or provide mental health care. Research in psychology includes the physical, cognitive, emotional or social aspects of human behavior and the ways in which humans interact with each other and the world. Although degrees in psychology are available at bachelor's, master's and doctorate levels, most psychologists hold doctorates, according to the American Psychological Association.
Types of Psychologists
Psychologists usually specialize in one of the following areas: clinical psychology, health psychology, neuropsychology, geropsychology, counseling, school psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, research/experimental psychology or industrial/organizational psychology. Clinical psychologists are the largest group; they help mentally or emotionally disturbed patients or work with people who have chronic illnesses or life-changing injuries. Health psychologists provide health maintenance counseling, while geropsychologists work with the elderly.
Work settings and duties vary according to the specialty. More than four out of 10 psychologists are self-employed, according to the “Occupational Outlook Handbook,” well above the average for professional workers. Psychologists might have private offices or work in facilities such as schools or hospitals. Those who perform work in hospitals might work alternate shifts or take call. Psychologists who work in government or industry usually work only in their place of employment and work structured schedules.
The basic educational preparation for a psychologist is the master’s degree, and many psychologists are prepared at the doctoral level. A doctorate is required for clinical psychology or private practice. Some psychology specialties also require internships or graduate study in specific areas such as counseling. Licensing is required for independent practice or any type of patient care such as counseling or working with school children.
Bureau of Labor Statistics and Psychologists
The Bureau of Labor Statistics groups psychologists into three areas: clinical, counseling and school psychologists; industrial/organizational psychologists, and all other psychologists, which would include specialties such as research. Of these groups, clinical psychologists must have doctoral degrees, and many counseling or social psychologists are similarly prepared, especially if they are in private practice. The BLS does not delineate salaries according to educational preparation, and there is no indication of starting salaries at any educational level. The BLS reports average annual salaries for psychologists as of May 2011 were $73,090 for clinical, counseling and school psychologists, $124,160 for industrial/organizational psychologists and $85,830 for all other psychologists.
American Psychological Association Salary Survey
The American Psychological Association conducted a salary survey in 2009. Although 12,820 members responded to the survey, only 458 were prepared at the master’s level and employed full time. The APA reports that a master’s level psychologist employed full time in direct human services with less than five years of experience had a median income of $37,500 in 2009. Those with master’s degrees employed full time in applied psychology with less than five years of experience had a median salary of $68,500 in 2009. The APA cautions that the groups of master’s prepared psychologists was small, and it was difficult to generalize salary data.
- Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images
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Denial of Peter
All four Canonical Gospels state that during Jesus' Last Supper with his disciples, he predicted that Peter would deny knowledge of him, stating that Peter would disown him before the rooster crowed the next morning. Following the arrest of Jesus Peter denied knowing him thrice, but after the third denial, heard the rooster crow and recalled the prediction as Jesus turned to look at him. Peter then began to cry bitterly. This final incident is known as the Repentance of Peter.
The emotional turmoil and turbulent emotions behind Peter's denial and later repentance have been the subject of major works of art for centuries. Examples include Caravaggio's Denial of Saint Peter, which is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The incidents have also inspired segments in various films related to the life and death of Jesus Christ (for instance, when Francesco De Vito performed as Peter in The Passion of the Christ) as well as references in musical works, both religious and secular.
The prediction, made by Jesus during the Last Supper that Peter would deny and disown him, appears in the Gospel of Matthew 26:33-35, the Gospel of Mark 14:29-31, the Gospel of Luke 22:33-34 and the Gospel of John 13:36-38. According to the Gospel of Matthew:
Peter replied, "Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will." "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "This very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times." But Peter declared, "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you." And all the other disciples said the same.
Later that night, Jesus was arrested. The first denial to a servant girl in Luke 22:54-57 is as follows:
Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house. Peter followed at a distance and when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them. A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight. She looked closely at him and said, "This man was with him." But he denied it. "Woman, I don't know him," he said.
The second denial to the same girl in Mark 14:69-70 is:
When the servant girl saw him there, she said again to those standing around, "This fellow is one of them." Again he denied it.
The third denial to a number of people, is emphatic as he curses according to Matthew 26:73-75:
After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, "Surely you are one of them, for your accent gives you away." Then he began to call down curses on himself and he swore to them, "I don't know the man!" Immediately a rooster crowed. Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: "Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times." And he went outside and wept bitterly.
About an hour later another asserted, "Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean." Peter replied, "Man, I don't know what you're talking about!" Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: "Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times." And he went outside and wept bitterly.
The Gospel of John 18:13-27 describes the account of the three denials as follows:
Simon Peter and another disciple were following Jesus. Because this disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the high priest’s courtyard, but Peter had to wait outside at the door. The other disciple, who was known to the high priest, came back, spoke to the girl on duty there and brought Peter in. "You are not one of his disciples, are you?" the girl at the door asked Peter. He replied, "I am not." ... As Simon Peter stood warming himself, he was asked, "You are not one of his disciples, are you?" He denied it, saying, "I am not." One of the high priest's servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, challenged him, "Didn't I see you with him in the olive grove?" Again Peter denied it, and at that moment a rooster began to crow.
Context and traditions
For much of the period of three years that Jesus spent in ministry, gathering and teaching disciples, he had been observed, criticised and harassed by scholars and priests. His teachings were sometimes seen as heretical and his actions in gathering a group of disciples as possibly having political motivation. Jesus' capture and trials were the culmination of this antipathy.
Peter was one of the twelve disciples most closely associated with Jesus. His denials are made in the face of accusation that he was "with Jesus", the term indicating the bond of discipleship. The Gospel of Matthew states that Peter denied Jesus "in front of everyone", thus making a public witness. Throughout his Gospel, Matthew stresses the importance of public witness as an essential element of discipleship, stating in Matthew 10:32-33: "Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven." Peter's denial is in direct conflict with the nature of discipleship, as described by Matthew.
The New Testament descriptions of Peter's denial depict the drama of the incident. Peter's antagonists in the discussion of his discipleship progress from a maid, to a maid plus a bystander, to a whole crowd. His denial progresses from a plea of ignorance, to a denial plus an oath and then to cursing and swearing with a total denial that he ever knew Jesus. The sound of the rooster then brings a shock to Peter that Jesus had predicted the three denials.
This episode has been seen as an incident that sheds light on the unique role of Peter and sets him apart from the other disciples, just as in the Gospel of Mark 16:7 in which the angel tells the women to "go and tell his disciples and Peter" about the resurrection of Jesus. In this episode, as often elsewhere in the Gospel of Mark, Peter acts as the focus of the apostles, and an essential Christological image is presented: the denials of Peter contrast with the frank confessions of Jesus in his trial by the Sanhedrin, portraying his faithfulness as prophet, Son and Messiah.
The three 'denials' are also present in a gnostic source, the Apocalypse of Peter from Nag Hammadi, but the roles are reversed in the context of meditation and seeing inner vision of the Master. In the gnostic Apocalypse of Peter, Jesus denies Peter "three times in this night" as not ready for inner sight, 72,5. Both details of "three times" denied and "in this night" being present suggests a relationship to the canonical portrayal of The Denial of Peter.
Prayers and traditions
Bishop Lancelot Andrewes composed the following prayer:
O Lord Jesus Christ, look upon us with those eyes of thine where-with thou dist look upon Peter in the hall; that with Peter we may repent and, by the same love be forgiven; for thine mercy's sake. Amen.
Referring to the tears shed by Peter during his repentance in the context of the Sacrament of Penance, Saint Ambrose said "in the Church, there are water and tears: the water of Baptism and the tears of repentance". Traditionally, "tears of repentance", as exemplified by Peter, have become a symbol both of mourning and comfort: a sign at once of sins repented and forgiveness sought.
In the Scriptural Way of the Cross introduced in 1991 by Pope John Paul II as a version of the Stations of the Cross, and performed each Good Friday at the Colosseum in Rome, the fourth station is the Denial of Peter.
During Holy week in Jerusalem, vigils at times stop at a location traditionally considered the location for the Repentance of Peter, not far from the house of the high priest Caiaphas, involved in the Sanhedrin Trial of Jesus.
The episode has been the subject of works of art for centuries. It has been depicted in a varieties of mediums and methods, ranging from 6th century mosaic at the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo to Russian icons and oil paintings by many old masters. The subject was sometimes included in cycles of the Life of Christ or the Passion, often as the only scene not to include the figure of Christ.
In Rembrandt's depiction, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, he presents the servant girl who recognizes Peter with a candle, illuminating Peter's face. Two soldiers look with suspicion as Peter speaks, while Jesus is shown in the distance, his hands bound behind him, turning to look at Peter. Peter's faces away from Jesus, and he gestures with his left hand, although his expression is free of defiance.
Caravaggio's Denial of Saint Peter is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Author George Weatherhead admires Caravaggio's depiction, the way Peter exhibits a wavering trepidation in his unsteady features, conscious of the unworthy falsehood he was telling. His lips quiver and his eyes seek, yet can not find the firmness of truth. In this painting, Caravaggio portrayed the servant girl using the same head of the woman that he used in his depiction of The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist.
A related subject, the Repentance of Peter, showing the end of the episode, was not often seen before Catholic Counter-Reformation art, where it became popular as an assertion of the sacrament of Confession against Protestant attacks. This followed an influential book by the Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621). The image typically shows Peter in tears, as a half-length portrait with no other figures, often with hands clasped as at right, and sometimes the cock in the background; it was often coupled with a repentant Mary Magdalen, another exemplar from Bellarmine's book.
Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, 6th century
Chludov Psalter, 9th century
Our Lady of the Fountains (La Brigue), 15th century
Simon Bening, 1525-1530
Repentance of Peter, Petr Brandl, 1724
Adam de Coster - The Denial of Saint Peter
Theodoor Rombouts: The Denial of Saint Peter
Nicolas Tournier - Denial of St Peter
|Part of a series on|
|In the New Testament|
|A series of articles on|
- Confession of Peter
- Doubting Thomas
- Gospel harmony
- Life of Jesus in the New Testament
- Jesus predicts his death
- Theological dictionary of the New Testament by Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey William Bromiley, Gerhard Friedrich 1980 ISBN 0-8028-2248-7 page 105
- Peter: apostle for the whole church by Pheme Perkins 2000 ISBN 0-567-08743-3 page 85
- The Gospel according to Matthew, Volume 1 by Johann Peter Lange 1865 Published by Charles Scribner Co, NY page 499
- Bible gateway Matthew 26:33-35 NIV
- Biblegateway Luke 22:55-57 NIV
- Biblegateway Mark 14:69-70 NIV
- Biblegateway Matthew 26:73-75 NIV
- Biblegateway Luke 22:59-62 NIV
- Biblegateway John 18:13-27 NIV
- Repentance in Christian theology by Mark J. Boda, Gordon T. Smith 2006 ISBN 0-8146-5175-5 page 110
- The Passion and Resurrection narratives of Jesus: a commentary by Stephen J. Binz 1989 ISBN 0-8146-1771-9 page 54
- The Collegeville Bible Commentary: New Testament by Robert J. Karris 1992 ISBN 0-8146-2211-9 page 900
- Peter: apostle for the whole church by Pheme Perkins 2000 ISBN 0-567-08743-3 page 65
- Prophet, Son, Messiah: narrative form and function in Mark 14-16 by Edwin Keith Broadhead 1994 ISBN 1-85075-476-4 page 154
- Ben Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 350.
- Prayers for People Under Pressure by Jonathan Aitken 2006 ISBN 0-8264-8275-9 page 58
- Vatican website, Catechism item 1429
- Repentance in Christian theology by Mark J. Boda, Gordon T. Smith 2006 ISBN 0-8146-5175-5 page 223
- Vatican website Fourth Station: Jesus is denied by Peter
- The week of salvation: history and traditions of Holy Week by James Monti ISBN 0-87973-532-5 page 150
- The Biblical Rembrandt by John I. Durham 2004 ISBN 0-86554-886-2
- A pedestrian tour through France and Italy by George Hume Weatherhead 2009 ISBN 1-150-13941-2 page 232
- Caravaggio: the art of realism by John L. Varriano 2006 ISBN 0-271-02717-7 page 110
- Hall, pp. 10 and 315
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Peter's denial.|
- James Hall, A History of Ideas and Images in Italian Art, 1983, John Murray, London, ISBN 0-7195-3971-4
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N 30° 19.703' W 96° 21.700' (WGS84)
Coordinates in Other Systems
Location: United States > Texas
Cache Type: Traditional
Status: Ready for Search
Date Hidden: 03 September 2011
Date Created: 03 September 2011
Last Modified: 09 September 2011
Cache is a small camo'd plastic tube. Bring your own writing utensil.
Old Independence Cemetery was founded in 1823. It is located in Independence, Texas on land donated by Madora Cole McCrocklin, a daughter of Judge J. P. Cole, one of the "Old 300" from the Austin Colony. The cemetery was an early community graveyard used by Anglo-American pioneers of Texas. It is commemorated by a state historical marker.
Congrats to AgNav and ChurchLady59 for the co-FTF!
arne nabgure erfgvat cynpr
Log Entries 2x 1x 0x New Log Entry
15 September 2013 phantom_309 Didn't find it
24 March 2012 TommyGator Found it
The wildflowers were abundant in the cemetery as we approached and wended our way around a few other cars enjoying this place. Fortunately, the GZ was clear so Mrs T., PirateKate, and I started looking around. PK and I chose poorly in selecting spots to search, which we recognized when we saw Mrs T. doing the happy dance in a spot where neither vof us had looked.
We had just finished signing the log and were about to replace the container when a gentleman came walking over and gave us a map of the local area and described many of the sights we might enjoy. I asked if he was the mayor of Independence, but he admitted only to being a local farmer who just wanted to help out. We really appreciated his thoughtfulness---just another aspect of geocaching that we truly enjoy.
We put the cache back, then went over for the other cache in this beautiful place. TFTC!
09 September 2011 AgNav Found it
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Tony Blair has vowed not to soften his crackdown on terrorism and its supporters either at home or abroad.
Blair says a clear, international message has to be sent
Speaking during his visit to India, Mr Blair said he was determined to press ahead with moves in both the UN and the Commons to tackle the issue head-on.
He said he believed there was a mood for a tough UN declaration coming from other countries.
And he said there was a line to draw over UK freedom of speech - one which terrorist supporters were crossing.
That would anger the British people who would quickly start to think their natural tolerance was being abused, Mr Blair warned.
He also praised his Home Secretary Charles Clarke and dismissed any suggestion he wanted to sack him.
On proposals for a statement from the UN meeting next week, he said: "I detect the mood is quite tough for action on that."
"The important thing is to send a very clear signal from the international community," he insisted.
Turning to his controversial planned laws at home, he said he expected them to be challenged in the courts but was not about to back down.
"We are not stopping any freedom of speech. But with freedom comes responsibility and you have to draw a line.
"If you do not draw the line people get very frustrated and angry and think their tolerance is being abused "You have to make a judgement in the end about what is right and what is wrong.
"We have to take that clear line and we have to see it through.
"I set the process out very deliberately. We are going to take these measures. They will be tested in the courts and let us see what happens," he said.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke was an "immensely effective" home secretary, he said, adding: "He does not just carry authority but he implements the measures and takes absolutely the right steps".
Claims he wanted to sack Mr Clarke were just wrong, the prime minister insisted.
And repeating his praise for the way the UK reacted to the London bombings, Mr Blair said: "The British people demonstrated remarkable maturity that won plaudits around the world."
But, like him, they expected a line to be drawn with people advocating and encouraging terrorism.
Speaking earlier after an India-European Union summit, the prime minister's spokesman said Britain was seeking support for a draft resolution to commit countries to act against those within their territory who incite terrorism, not just those who commit it.
Mr Blair, on the second leg of his tour of Asia, will be among leaders attending next week's world summit to mark the 60th anniversary of the UN.
The EU and India pledged to boost anti-terrorism cooperation and crack down on terrorist financing and other money laundering at Wednesday's summit, the two sides said in a joint statement.
Mr Blair hailed the agreement as a "turning point" in relations between the two economic powers.
The "action plan" with India will point the way to greater co-operation between the EU and India, Mr Blair said.
The prime minister also saw a deal signed to involve India in the satellite navigation system called Galileo, which is a competitor to the United States' global positioning system.
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009;
A series of federal and local officials repeatedly said that there was no evidence high lead levels in District drinking water was affecting public health:
"There will be people who will never consider the data definitive or sufficient to totally allay concerns, but in the real world you do the very best you can. There's a problem with lead in the water, and it has to be fixed, but that clearly hasn't had an adverse effect we can demonstrate on blood lead levels at this time."'
- Daniel R. Lucey, chief medical officer, D.C. Department of Health. March 2004
"None of the 201 persons we tested who live in homes with the highest measured levels of lead in the drinking water (i.e. > 300 parts per billion (ppb)) had elevated blood lead levels"
- Daniel Lucey, D.C. Department of Health's chief medical officer, Senate testimony on April 2004.
"The findings in this report indicate that although lead in tap water contributed to a small increase in [blood lead levels] in D.C., no children were identified with [ blood lead levels higher than] 10 micrograms per deciliter, even in homes with the highest water lead levels."
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and D.C. Department of Health report, April 2004.
"...the data strongly suggests that there is no correlation between the presence of lead service lines in the District and elevated blood levels. "
- Jerry Johnson, general manager, D. C. Water and Sewer Authority, testimony to Congress, July 2004.
"Residents with high lead levels in their tap water did not have elevated blood lead levels. "
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site
"Drinking water is at most a minor source of lead for children. Drinking water may contribute a small amount if [there is] sustained exposure."
- Tee Guidotti, George Washington University chair of environmental health department and WASA contractor, May 2005
"In 2004, WASA funded a Department of Health program that conducted voluntary blood lead level screenings of more than 6,800 District residents. The results of the tests confirmed that there was no identifiable public health impact from elevated lead levels in drinking water."
- D.C. Water and Sewer Authority Web site, January 2006.
"The expanded screening program developed in response to increased lead levels in water uncovered the true dimensions of a continuing problem with sources of lead in homes, specifically lead paint...
Lead levels in the blood of children in the district have been falling for many years and continued to fall through the period of elevated lead in the drinking-water distribution system."
- Tee Guidotti, main author of report on conclusions from high lead levels in D. C. water, January 2007
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Daily News Archive
Pesticide Board Advocates Less Pesticides on Lawns
Chemical fertilizers can kill natural microorganisms that foster healthy soil. "When they maintain their lawns like that," said Gary Fish, a state environmental specialist, "they end up with more disease, more weeds and more pest problems. Then they turn to pesticides." The Board estimates that 1.8 million pounds of yard-care pesticides were placed on Maine lawns in 2001, up from 800,000 pounds in 1995. Throughout the country, approximately 67 million pounds of pesticides are used each year on lawns.
These numbers and the increasing suburbanization of Maine’s landscape have led the board to turn its attention to household pesticide and fertilizer use, a growing source of pollution for Maine's rivers and streams. The state has long regulated pesticides used by loggers and farmers, who receive training on how to use the chemicals. But it has paid little attention to lawn chemicals, which are much more frequently used. "There hasn't been enough effort and prevention in this area," Fish said. "And the way that Madison Avenue treats pesticides is a little too lackadaisical."
Pesticides used in lawn care are among the dangerous and most prevalent in society today. Of the 36 most commonly used lawn pesticides, 14 are probable or possible carcinogens, 15 are linked with birth defects, 21 with reproductive effects, 24 with neurotoxicity, 22 with liver or kidney damage, and 34 are sensitizers and/or irritants. For more information about lawn pesticides, see Lawn Pesticide Facts and Figures.
The Board recommends that Maine residents raise the blade on their mowers and cut their grass less often. "A lot of homeowners don't realize that their grass is a plant," said Kelly Bourdeau, a spokeswoman for the pesticide board. "They're stressing out the roots."
The pesticide board’s main message is that people can have a nice-looking lawn with less work -- and without harming the environment. "We're just trying to educate people on how to grow grass," Bourdeau said. "We want them to have beautiful lawns. We all want beautiful lawns."
ACTION: Take steps to make your own lawn pesticide-free.
To learn more about alternatives for safer lawn care, read our Least
Toxic Control of Lawn Pests factsheet and other resources on our
Lawns and Landscapes Program Page.
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Paraguay’s natural beauty encompasses everything from desolate wilderness to crashing waterfalls. If you’re keen to take in the country’s Atlantic forests before they’re destroyed by deforestation, head to Reserva Cordillera San Rafael in the southeastern corner of the country. This 73,000 hectare park is one of Earth’s most ecologically significant habitats. Here you’ll spot capybara, speckled rail, and pampas foxes among the trees.
If big mammals are your thing, travel north to Parque Nacional Defensores del Chaco. With luck and patience, you might just see puma, jaguar and tapir prowling on the plains. This sprawling wilderness is the least populated part of Paraguay, so camping in the wild is possible in protected areas.
Paraguayan food is simple, hearty, tasty, and almost always made from two abundant staples: mandioca (or cassava) and corn. From food trucks to high-end restaurants, there are variations of the nation’s favourite dishes on menus: chipá (cornbread rolls), borí borí (chicken soup) and kivevé (a sweet dish made from creamed pumpkin). Sopa Paraguaya (translation: Paraguayan soup), served alongside grilled meats, is different than its name suggests. It actually resembles cornbread and contains salty cheese, eggs, and milk wrapped in banana leaves and baked in a wood-fired oven. For an afternoon snack mid-sightseeing, pick up a couple of piping hot empanadas from a street vendor. This ultimate street food is Latin America’s answer to the Cornish pasty: miniature pastry parcels stuffed with sweet or savoury fillings. They’re best washed down with an ice-cold local lager.
When it comes to beverages, no trip to Paraguay is complete without trying tereré, the nation’s favourite drink. This bitter herbal tea known as yerba mate is cold-brewed and served in a guampa mug with a silver straw called a bombilla. Sharing in this daily ritual is a sign of being accepted as an honorary local.
Though not likely considered one of the world’s top shopping destinations, Paraguay has some incredible bargains to offer if you know where to look. Ciudad del Este, just across the border from Brazil, is Paraguay’s tax-free shopping haven. Despite being a little seedy, it’s the best place to go for cut-price electronics, perfume, and designer label items.
For authentic souvenirs in Asunción, as well as everything else under the sun, look no further than the famous Mercado Cuatro. At this bustling bazaar, you’ll find fresh produce and ripped DVDs alongside colourful birds and spices from all over the world. Be prepared to haggle for handmade lace and leather handbags.
An oasis of calm outside of capital city Asunción, Parque Nacional Ybycuí is the place to go for a bracing hike, followed by a cooling dip. In addition to a dilapidated munitions factory, the park is home to two waterfalls, a deep well called Pozo Tatacua, and several natural swimming pools.
If heading into the Chaco, be sure to make a pit stop at Cooperativa Mennonita in Filadelfia–perhaps Paraguay’s most unusual town. It’s home to Paraguay’s Mennonite community, which came over from eastern Europe in the early 20th century. There are plenty of ice cream parlours and manicured lawns to explore, as well as a museum packed with stuffed animals from all over the desert. The fascinating and unmissable Cooperativa Mennonita is a sprawling supermarket in dairy country. For locals, it takes favours in lieu of real money.
For a glimpse back in time at Paraguay’s turbulent history, start with a trip to see the itá letra petroglyphs in the Amambay Hills near Villarrica. These ancient writings—representing constellations, animals and female figures—are thought to have been inscribed into the rocks by native Paraguayan tribes between 5000 and 2500 B.C. They’re considered the gateway to the Ybytyruzú mountain range and are held sacred by the local Pai Tavytera people.
Leap to Paraguay’s more recent history at the UNESCO Jesuit ruins of La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná and Jesús de Tavarangue. After the Spanish invaded in the 17th century, they established Jesuit missions to ‘civilise’ the indigenous people, building whole towns within their red stone walls. These two communities are only 12km apart and once housed schoolhouses, chapels, and markets. The ruins of the temple’s altar and the central square are still present at Trinidad.
Nearby, in the town of Yaguarón, is another important religious site: Iglesia de San Buenaventura. This 17th century Franciscan chapel is one of the finest examples of Baroque architecture in South America, carved from lapacho wood and leafed in gold. Don’t miss the exquisitely decorated pulpit at the far end of the nave.
If you’re an adrenaline junkie, stick around for the Trans-Chaco Rally, held across October and November in the north of the country. This three-day motorsports event is considered one of the toughest competitions in the industry and it easily draws thousands of spectators. Booking accommodation well ahead is recommended.
As in much of South America, Paraguay’s festivals are a vital part of its national identity. Every spring, before Lent, a version of carnaval explodes onto the streets in Encarnación, which is affectionately known as ‘the Pearl of the South.’ It takes place across several weekends in February—a celebration of glitz, glamour, and rhythmic beats led by women bedecked in feathers and sparkling costumes. Towards the end of August, visitors may stumble upon Paraguay’s Bolivian Urkupiña Festival, which is a slightly more humble affair. Championed by the country’s Bolivian immigrants, this upbeat fiesta celebrates the Virgin Mary of Urkupiña with folk dancing and music in traditional costume.
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We’ve talked about how kinesiology tape can help during pregnancy but, what about postpartum?
Not surprisingly, taping can help with all stages both before, during, and after a woman gives birth.
A woman’s body goes through an enormous amount of change during the 9 months she’s carrying her baby, not the least of which are physical.
Posture significantly changes during the 9 months of carrying a child:
- Forward head posture
- Anterior pelvic tilt
- Shortened and tight musculature of the low back
- Tight pectoral and upper trapezius muscles
- Over-stretching of the hamstrings and gluteus maximus
- Pronation of the feet
Most often, attention is given to the anterior body after pregnancy however, incorporating posterior postural taping as well as taping for proper foot position can create a significant improvement in discomfort and a return to activity.
After the baby is born, unless the mom is mindful to make corrections on her own, kinesiology tape can serve as a non-invasive tool to facilitate proper positioning and bring back proprioception and activation to these areas. If the mom had to deliver via c-section, than taping can definitely assist with scar tissue work after appropriate surgical healing has taken place.
These 3 applications are generalized. Assess each one of your client’s correctly and use kinesiology tape according to your findings.
1. Diastasis Recti and Basic Abdominal Taping
In the case of Diastasis Recti, a woman’s rectus abdominus physically separates. Typical reasons for this happening are carrying a high weight baby or multiples, if it’s a second or third child, if the pelvis is narrow, or if the woman is over 35 when she becomes pregnant.
Using kinesiology tape for this condition is an easy anterior application on the abdominals that encourages proprioception, engagement, and postural changes that narrow the “gap” in the abdominal wall. Even if Diastasis Recti is not present, taping the abdominals and diaphragm to encourage proper rib position over the pelvis as opposed to the typical “rib flair”, can significantly contribute to returning to a more functional posture as well as a diaphragmatic breathing pattern.
2. Taping the Lower Leg
Beginning at the arch of the foot, a helical taping application up the lower limb that promotes a balanced foot position can have a direct effect on re-centering gravity and minimizing the anterior pelvic tilt. As the foot returns to a neutral position, this effect can translate into a lesser degree of femoral internal rotation and pelvic tilt. Note also whether there is edema in the lower leg and tape for fluid management accordingly. Due to the foot being a “high traffic” area, this application might only last for 1-3 days versus the typical 3-5 days on other areas of the body.
3. Taping the Posterior Chain
A prominent low back arch and discomfort might be present with many postpartum clients. A decompression strip across the site of pain can help with pain management thus promoting movement as opposed to a stiff and rigid guarding behavior. Often the hamstrings and glutes are overlooked when addressing this issue but they play a significant role in restoring correct posture and alleviating the compressive nature of the anterior pelvic tilt.
Encouraging glute and hamstring activation with kinesiology tape can help with proprioception to those areas. Running parallel strips of tape from the upper hamstring, over the glutes and up the erector spinae to the middle to lower trapezius may contribute to returning to a neutral center of gravity and activation of posterior chain musculature. Shorter, interrupted strips of kinesiology tape can be placed along the same areas versus one long strip to achieve the same affect.
Due to the forward head posture, some clients might experience posterior neck pain as well. Applying a criss crossed pattern on the posterior, superior shoulder area that leads to or near the opposite, inferior angle of the scapula can also encourage a correct upper posture and position of the head.
As with any intervention involving kinesiology tape, be sure to refer to your client’s primary care physician and always use a 2” test strip on the inside of the wrist or forearm if it’s the first time your client is using kinesiology tape. The skin is more sensitive during and after pregnancy so take precaution.
About the Author
Stacey Thomas, L.M.T., S.F.M.A., F.M.S., N.K.T., C.F.-L2, has been dedicated to human movement and athletic performance since 1997 and certified as a sports massage therapist since 2005. She holds certification in Functional Movement Screen, Selective Functional Movement Assessment, Neurokinetic Therapy and CrossFit Level 2, as well as other training and soft tissue modalities. She is credentialed by educational organizations regarding human movement and soft tissue treatment. You can find her in one of her three Front Range, Coloado, clinics treating athletes or teaching courses for RockTape.
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The 2013 New York winter wheat crop was estimated at 7.82 million bushels, 46 percent more than last year's production, according to Blair Smith, U.S. Agriculture Department National Agricultural Statistics Service, New York Field Office state statistician.
Area harvested was 115,000 acres, a 35 percent increase from a year ago. Yields are estimated at a record high 68 bushels per acre, five bushels more than last year.
New York oats totaled 3.08 million bushels, a decrease of 5 percent from last year. Area for harvest decreased 8 percent to 46,000 acres. Yields are estimated at 67 bushels per acre, a two bushel increase from last year.
Barley production in New York is estimated at 416,000 bushels, an 11 percent increase from last year. Area for harvest totaled 8,000 acres, unchanged from a year ago. Yields averaged 52 bushels per acre, a five bushel increase from 2012.
U.S. wheat production totaled 2.13 billion bushels in 2013, a decrease of 6 percent from 2012. Grain area totaled 45.2 million acres, an 8 percent decrease from the previous year. The United States yield is estimated at a record high 47.1 bushels per acre, a .8 bushel increase from the previous year. The levels of production and changes from 2012 by type are winter wheat, 1.53 billion bushels, a 7 percent decrease; other spring wheat, 532 million bushels, a 2 percent decrease; and Durum wheat, 61.5 million bushels, a 26 percent decrease.
Oat production is estimated at 66.0 million bushels, an increase of 3 percent from 2012. Yield is estimated at 64 bushels per acre, a 2.7 bushel increase from the previous year. Harvested area, at 1.03 million acres, is slightly less than last year. This is the second smallest acreage harvested for grain on record.
Barley production is estimated at 215 million bushels, a 2 percent decrease from 2012. Average yield per acre, at 71.7 bushels, increased 3.8 bushels from the previous year. Producers seeded 3.48 million acres in 2013, a 4 percent decrease from last year. Harvested area, at 3 million acres, decreased 8 percent from 2012.
Rye production for 2013 is estimated at 7.67 million bushels, a 10 percent increase from 2012. Harvested area totaled 278,000 acres, a 30,000 acre increase from 2012. The United States yield, at 27.6 bushels per acre, decreased .4 bushels from the previous year. Favorable growing conditions in the Southern Great Plains and the Southeast led to increases in harvested acres from a year earlier.
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|junior high school first year||Vocabulary consolidation and listening practice.||none||10 mins||Letter cards|
Discuss this activity here.To play, simply speak the target word, after which it's the students' task to select the letters which spell the word, and then align themselves (holding a card or cards) in correct order. When they think they have the spelling right they must call out to the ALT, "___ sensei, we are ready." If the word is misspelt, they have the chance to try again. When they have the spelling right, give them an ordinal number (1st team, 2nd team...), and have them sit or crouch down. As well as being a useful teaching device, this makes it easier to see the other teams, and also to score after the turn is complete. I.e., simply ask, "Who was the 1st team?" etc., and award points to that group. If there are 6 teams, 6 points are awarded to the 1st team, 5 to the 2nd, 4 to the 3rd, etc.. At the end of your time, tally the points on your scoreboard and reward the winning team.
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How do cellphone signals work?
Asked by pallen123 (1511 ) April 16th, 2011
Is there a device or program that will monitor cell-ID’s within a certain proximity to me?
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This question is in the General Section. Responses must be helpful and on-topic.
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Allen County Prosecuting Attorney – We are responsible for the prosecution of all felony and misdemeanor domestic violence and sexual assault cases within Allen County. We have written resources to help individuals obtain Protective Orders, and to help victims recognize and report domestic violence and sexual assault and assist them through criminal prosecution of their perpetrators.
Center for Nonviolence – Fort Wayne’s Center for Nonviolence provides education, support, and advocacy to end domestic and other forms of violence while modeling equality and power sharing. For 30 years, it has served men, women, and children on both the victim and perpetrator sides of violence with the ultimate goal to protect victims by holding those who use violence accountable for their actions and by helping victims heal. The Center has one of oldest ‘batterer intervention programs’ in the country and serves all Northeast Indiana counties.
Crime Victim Care of Allen County (CVC) – Crime Victim Care’s mission is to bring wholeness to immigrants and refugee families who experience brokenness due to violence, crime, mental health, addictions, abuse and neglect. While serving a diverse community, CVC strives to help those who experience victimization.
Northeast Indiana Diversity Library (NIDL) – The Northeast Indiana Diversity Library is both a free-lending library of over 6000 circulating items and an archive of local and regional gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender (GLBT) history.
Northeast Indiana LGBTQ Coalition – The Northeast Indiana LGBTQ Coalition is an advocacy group whose goal is to serve the LGBTQ community in Allen County and surrounding areas. Comprised of LGBTQ-affirming non-profit organizations, the NEI LGBTQ Coalition seeks to act as a collective alliance and voice for the LGBTQ community. NEI LGBTQ Coalition members include the Bowen Center (Columbia City), the Center for Nonviolence, Congregation Achduth Vesholom, Fort Wayne Pride, Fort Wayne Sexual Assault Treatment Center, Indiana Youth Group, Northeast Indiana AIDS Task Force, Northeast Indiana Diversity Library, PFLAG Fort Wayne Chapter, the Resource Center at IPFW, Safe Zone at IPFW, Safe Zone for Students at IPFW, the Sarah & Albert Reuben Partners in Health Education – Planned Parenthood of Indiana, the Women’s Bureau Inc., and the YWCA of Northeast Indiana.
Sexual Assault Treatment Center – The Fort Wayne Sexual Assault Treatment Center’s Forensic Nurse Examiners provide first-response medical forensic examinations to women, children and men who have been sexually assaulted. Services are available 24/7/365 days a year at no cost. The Center is the recognized and credentialed provider for patients who have been victims of sexual assault in Northeast Indiana, including: Allen, Adams, Blackford, DeKalb, Elkhart, Grant, Huntington, Jay, Kosciusko, LaGrange, Miami, Noble, Steuben, Wabash, Wells, and Whitley counties.
Womens Bureau – The Fort Wayne Womens Bureau serves to advance women through advocacy, education, and economic empowerment. Programs include a 24-Hour Rape Crisis Hotline (260-426-7273 or 888-311-7273) and programming to relieve the trauma of sexual assault.
YWCA – The YWCA Northeast Indiana operates Indiana’s longest-serving domestic violence crisis shelter. It also supports Northeast Indiana’s most diverse refugee community. It serves Allen, Dekalb, Huntington, Noble, Wells, and Whitley Counties.
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Haiti caught the world’s attention when it was hit by a massive earthquake. Celebrities spoke out and people were encouraged to text to donate to the relief effort. Families were separated and many were unable to bury their dead. Part of the reason that Haiti was so devastated by the earthquake, is a history of slavery and colonialism. The average salary in Haiti is still less that 1USD per day. As I predicted when the earthquake first happened, now that the initial sensationalistic media coverage has ended and the Anderson Coopers are safely behind their desks, the world have forgotten the Haitian people who are still trapped in their rubble.
The Associated Press reports only two percent of the rubble has been removed and only 13,000 temporary shelters have been constructed. Not a single cent of the US aid pledged for rebuilding has arrived in Haiti. In the last few days the US pledged it would put up 10% of the billion dollars in reconstruction aid promised. Only 15 percent of the aid pledged by countries and organizations around the world has reached the country so far.
There is no electricity at all in the camps. Some have lights on poles that work some of the time. Many have no lights at all.
There is no food. The children are terribly hungry. The food aid program was terminated in April and nothing took its place. The authorities cut off the food so people would leave the camps, but where is there to go?
Security is a huge problem. Less than a dozen of the thousand plus camps have official security at night. During the day the police may come around or maybe the heavily armed MINUSTAH UN forces will patrol. But at night security forces vanish. With little or no light at night, tens of thousands of unguarded sheet structures and canvas walls offer thieves and gangs an inviting target. Violence against women and girls is widespread. Women who go to the latrines at night are attacked. Some women talk of carrying rape babies. Others will do anything for the crudest abortion. When they go to the police and ask them to investigate, officers demand money for gas. Even those who pay the police usually end up frustrated. There is a sense of impunity.
There are an estimated 1,300 “camps” of homeless people in Haiti. Homeless people live literally everywhere. People are camped in the middle of many streets. Shanty structures are built right up to the edge of streets. Every park, every school yard, every parking lot appear to have people living under sheets or lean to tents. (source)
Many people texted their latte money to Haitian relief and felt that they had really accomplished something. The western world patted itself on the back about its charitable efforts, with no acknowledgment of how culpable we all were in the deaths of innocent people. It was easy to believe that because an earthquake is a natural disaster, that the west has not been equally devastating to the tiny Caribbean nation.
Right after the quake hit, Wyclef Jean hopped on a plane to do his part to heal the suffering. He even recently tried to run for president. Shortly after the quake, reports surfaced suggesting that Wyclef was wrongfully profiting off of Yele, causing once positive perceptions to become negative. Actor and activist Sean Pen and Jean engaged in a very public argument over what was the best for the people of Haiti and Wyclef’s ability to be a leader.
Former US president Bill Clinton has given $500,000 to actor Sean Penn for Haiti.Clinton has shown his support of Penn’s ongoing work in Haiti by donating half-a-million dollars to his charity.The Clinton Foundation gave $500,000 to Penn’s charity, J/P Haitian Relief Organisation.The donated money will be used to provide bridge funding for a camp in Petionville, which is run by the organization.Penn, 50, told People.com: ‘The support of President Clinton and the Clinton Foundation is an extraordinary boost in our organisation’s ability to continue its work in Haiti. (source)
Sean Penn has certainly come a long way since Shanghai Surprise. He is generous with his time and has put his celebrity power behind NGO’s in great need of support. He was one of the first celebrities to speak out against the Iraq war, and he endured ridicule for his trip there to tour the country. It is fair to say that Penn has been on the right side of history in recent years; however, he is still a White man, with enormous class and western privilege. When we think of what it means to exist with privilege, Penn is the definition.
If Clinton truly had doubts about Wyclef’s organizations, surely he could have found a relief group led by the Haitians themselves to make his generous donation to. His actions suggest that it is the White man’s burden to save Haiti, rather than their obligation to correct the historical wrongs that lead to this tragedy in the first place. To me the first step would be to acknowledge that Haitians are the best equipped to decide what they need, as well as have the knowledge to properly direct the funds to achieve their goals.
Haiti has long been Clinton’s pet nation building project. It was his administration with the collusion of France and Canada that staged a coup to remove the democratically elected leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It comes as no surprise that today Clinton still believes in his right to circumvent the Haitian people to accomplish his goals. While he was president of the United States, he had every opportunity to create positive change and yet, all he did was enforce neo-colonialism and therefore any charity that he would support, in my mind is immediately questionable and that much more so when it is lead by a White western man of extreme privilege.
If the western world was really serious about Haitian relief, the nation would not be in the terrible condition that it is today. It seems to me this is a case of saying the right thing, while actually doing as little as possible to secure concrete change and increase the living standard of the Haitian people. Haiti is the worlds sweatshop and it is filled with the descendants of Blacks who launched the first large scale successful slave rebellion. The west has never forgiven the tiny nation for daring to and win its independence and has sought to punish Haiti for this for generations. Don’t expect any efforts to help that doesn’t involve the face of an over privileged White western man. Neo-colonialism has been far to profitable to make any real change in how we relate to the tiny Carribbean nation, no matter how many florid speeches are given.
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Rules – they are a critical part of any sport, put in place to give some kind of structure and ensure there’s a level playing field for all to compete. They should be simple enough to understand and follow, yet well thought out enough to avoid any conflict and disorder. Following so far? Good.
Now then, it’s a Badger fact that Formula One has seen more rules changes than Jordan* has seen tabloid headlines and more changes than Toyota have recalled cars – and that’s a lot. So many that every year, rather than tweaking them a little bit, they change three or four different rules. That may sound clever, but if it’s a great season or even more crucially, if it’s a poor season, how will they judge which rule change is the cause of it is? They won’t be able to – how very clever.
WHO ARE ‘THEY’ ?
Who are ‘they’ you should ask – ‘they’ are various ‘groups’ involved in F1 – namely the ‘Overtaking Working Group’, the ‘Sporting Working Group’, and then there’s the teams’ association known as FOTA and the governing body, the FIA. Now that’s a lot of groups of folk sitting around large tables having discussions about the racing, the sport and the overall spectacle F1 – sounds quite fab doesn’t it.
There’s only one problem – they seem to work about as efficiently as many public sector organisations do, i.e. meetings about meetings that only end up reversing what has been done before or missing the point entirely – that may sounds harsh, but seriously, what good has come of all these people having a natter?
WHAT’S THE POINT…?
2010 follows the recent trend and sees a tsunami of changes – but this time mainly looking at the races rather than the cars – they did that in 2009. First up, it’s the much hyped points system. For many many years points were awarded to the top 6 finishers, 10 for the win, 6 for 2nd and then 4, 3, 2 and 1 point for 6th – this worked pretty well, there were some super close races for the finishing line with the 2nd place driver always challenging as much as possible for 1st and the championship battle often went down to the last few races at least with the points gap never being more than a handful. Then, the powers that be made the system that we’re all familiar with today – 10 for the win, 8 for 2nd and so on, down to 8th position. This also worked well – or so we thought…
…because the subject of ‘points’ was obviously on their agenda for 2010 and now there’s a brand new (or MotoGP inspired) points system where the winning driver receives a massive 25 points – a full 150% more than the previous decades of F1. They’ve also realised that if the driver in 2nd place is due significantly less points than he would get if he were 1st, he’d try harder for the win so now the 2nd place driver is in line for only 18 points, with 3rd getting 15 (see the new scale here) – now that’s genius isn’t it – they’ve worked out that if there’s an incentive to go for 1st, there will be more exciting racing – well that’s the plan. In reality – every driver (bar Piquet Jr – he’d rather crash) goes into motorsport to win, so the greater points incentive is unlikely to make the massive difference it’s intended to… (oh and it means comparing historical points scores a whole new nightmare for statisticians…)
BANNING OF THE HOSEPIPE
Next up for 2010 is the removal of re-fuelling during grands prix. The reason – to cut costs. Now this is a good idea, but hardly rocket science – the fact that they ever introduced it into F1 at all is beyond us here at Badger. It does nothing for the sport. What used to be an test of endurance, speed, skill and stamina for the chequered flag became 2 or 3 part sprint race. Why would you risk a manoeuvre when you could wait a average maximum of 20 laps to do it via a pit stop. Ok, so we had flames now and then and of course Massa’s comical Singapore pit stop in 2008 – but that hardly makes re-fuelling worth while. It’s good that it’s banned – there may be some real racing now, with drivers making their tyres last as long as possible…
…except ‘they’ have gone and changed rules to do with tyres too – the intelligence and forward-thinkingness of these ‘working’ groups continues to astound us. Now a new rule has been put in place that means the top 10 drivers after qualifying all have to start the race on the tyres that they did their final qualifying laps on, whereas the other 16 drivers can do as they please. You don’t have to be Einstein to see what the idea is – to introduce another level of strategy for the leading drivers, i.e. play safe or take a punt for pole and pay for it at the start of the race. Again, we have to ask – is this rule really needed – all it does is give the commentators something to talk about and makes the sport seem even more complex than it is to the new and casual fans. Well done.
AS IF WE AREN’T ‘TYRED’ ALREADY
‘They’ must like tyres because they are also keeping the ‘drivers must use both types of tyre’ during a grand prix – jay-sus, are they actually trying to make talking about F1 racing as exciting as not winning the lottery – if so well done again, that’s another tick in a box. Whether it’s true or myth, the story that Bridgestone wanted this rule in place so that people would talk about its tyres is worrying. What if Tango want everyone to talk about its fizzy orangeade – are drivers expect to drink some during a pit stop… we hope you’re still following…
…now, the other significant change is that the front wheels and tyres on 2010 cars are narrower than they were in 2009 – that’s exciting isn’t it. It’s as clear as day an admittance on the OWG’s part that the massive car regulation changes introduced for last season didn’t have the desired effect so they are reducing the grip by ensuring there’s less rubber on the road in 2010. Great, but then that’s directly against what they set out to do – i.e. to enable cars to race nose-to-tail for overtaking and out-braking manoeuvres – with less grip at the front of the car, surely that’s going to make it more trickier than before… no?
OUR FINAL THOUGHT
So that’s it – here at Badger we’re all looking forward to the new season and are hoping it’s a close-fought, action-packed fun fair with a few office politics and not yet another step to make F1 an over technical, inaccessible sport – don’t get us wrong, we love it, but just wish there was more freedom for teams and drivers with less of the tiresome geeky rules that do nothing for the spectacle except reduce its appeal.
One final thought before we go – the FIA have launched their annual survey for fans to fill in and submit – that may seem like a good idea on the face of it – the FA do the same for Premier League fans (only if they have been to a match), but with the plethora of fan-driven F1 sites scoured across the interweb you would think hope ‘they’ have heard of a little website called Google – it will tell them what the fans are thinking.
If you do fancy filling our the FIA fans survey, you do so here, but we can’t guarantee they’ll read, acknowledge or act on your comments – tickets prices still increase year on year and despite the majority of fans being European or from across the pond from here in the UK, ‘they’ continue to stage races on the other side of the planet – know any Korean, Singaporean, Malaysian or Bahrain based F1 drivers? Thought not. Do us a favour and add a link to this article on your survey response…
*as in Katie Price, not the Irish fella that once owned an F1 team
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Wesleyan University was named the 2009 Most Vegetarian-Friendly College in the United States by Peta2. According to the Peta2 website, "the acclaimed liberal arts college, which has a history of social justice activism, lives up to the hype when it comes to vegan options. Some of the creative choices offered include veggie chicken red curry with steamed broccolini and organic jasmine rice, three-mushroom vegan ragu with penne pasta, and barbecue seitan.
Following last year's second-place finish, Dining Services officials pulled out all of the stops in 2009, even setting up voting stations around campus to rally support from their well-fed student population. These efforts, combined with the impressive range of vegan options available on campus, have helped secure the title of the Most Vegetarian-Friendly College in America."
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Whether you’re considering visiting or you just arrived in Belgium, you may have in mind a few words like “Beer”, “Waffles” or even “Chocolate” when it comes to expressing what Belgium echoes to you. If you want to know seven of the must-try Belgian specialties are and the stories behind them, we’ve got you covered.
1- Chocolate… Praline in fact
Belgium is world widely known for its chocolate but the actual Belgian specialty is in reality called praline (pronounce “Prah-Leen”) and is completely different from the Praline people make in Louisiana or what French people refer to as when mentioning Praline.
When in Louisiana praline has a fudgy consistency, is made with cream and pecan and French Praline is an almond or peanut coated in cooked sugar and often tinted in pink, Belgian Praline is a stuffing covered in chocolate; it could be a buttercream, a ganache or praliné (basically sugar, almonds and/or hazelnut, vanilla, cocoa and cocoa butter all mixed into a paste).
The word praline was actually invented by Jean Nehaus Jr. in 1912. His grandfather had a pharmacy in the late 19th century in central Brussels where he sold confectionery such as cough sweets and licorice for stomach aches. His grandson carried on the family tradition and came up with his new confectionery that had a soft heart coated in chocolate: the Belgian praline was born.
Today, the house Neuhaus still exists and is the most famous chocolate manufacturer but it has to share its ambassador status of the Belgian praline with other huge manufacturers such as Corné Port Royal, Léonidas or Godiva for instance. There are many other chocolate brands of course , maybe a little less renowned. Go ahead and try them out !
Even though Belgians consume quite often pralines that are pretty “basic”, a few high-end chocolate artisans have emerged like Pierre Marcolini or Frédéric Blondeel that are the faces of a new craftmanship with their niche chocolate.
As a matter of fact, whether you’re not very adventurous and want to taste what most locals eat or you’re a bit more bold and feel like going on a full gustative journey, you will find the right match.
2- Clash of Waffles
Waffles come in all shapes and forms, they can be sweet and savory (think chicken and waffles) and are consumed pretty much everywhere in the world. Each country has its version, but we have to admit that Belgian waffles are world famous.
In Belgium, we have two main different waffles : Brussels Waffles (Gaufre de Bruxelles) and Liège Waffles (Gaufre de Liège). There is a little quarrel between people from Brussels and Liège trying to respectively claim the birth of the waffle, but the truth is that, even though it’s a little bit tough to really draw a full historic on waffles, they were most likely born in Brussels in the 16th century, when they appeared in Liège two centuries later. Legend has it that waffles were made in Brussels during holidays and prayer days as well and that they were created later in Liège.
The word itself, “Waffle” (the French word Gaufre as well) comes from the Old Frankish word walfre meaning honeycomb.
Now that we have situated the birth and that we know about the medieval origin of the word, let’s discuss the difference between the two kinds of waffles.
Indeed, those two waffles only have in common that they’re delicious, in a different way.
On one hand we have the Brussels waffle that is rectangular and has 20 very well aligned squares, it’s light, a little crunchy and the only limit to the toppings that would go on it is definitely your imagination ! Though, locals usually eat theirs topped with just powdered sugar and maybe some whipped cream.
On the other hand, we have the Liège waffle that is way less regular in shape but usually has its 24 required squares and has sugar pearls inside that melt and caramelize a bit. This waffle is way richer, sweeter and is generally eaten plain but you can absolutely top it with anything as well, such as fruits, chocolate and whipped cream.
Now, the only way to decide which one tastes the best is to go test them.
3- French fries.. Or Belgian Frites?
Some will say there is no difference between potato and potato, yet Belgians disagree on their beloved frites being called French fries.
Although it is arguable whether the concept of “fries” was born in Belgium or France, we all will agree that frying potatoes is something that started in the middle of the 19th century, and rumor has it the person behind it was a man called Mr Fritz.
The real difference between “French” fries and Belgian frites is not the shape (even though Belgian fries are usually cut thicker) but IN WHAT they’re being fried. Indeed, French fries are fried in oil whereas Belgian frites are fried in fat.
Belgians go get their fries from places called “fritkot” and top them with salt and sauce. You could totally eat them with a tiny fork, but eating them with your fingers is most definitely the way to go.
It’s lunchtime and you’re wondering what you should be having ? Fries on their own didn’t sound like enough to you ? Then, the answer is Moules-frites. That’s another dish French and Belgian are fighting over since it’s a very popular dish in both Belgium and North of France.
Though we can’t really tell where it’s from, rumor has it the dish was popularized by a Belgian brasserie in the 19th century.
The “classic” Moules-Frites are called marinière, you can enjoy them at any local brasserie , but most typically in the city centers. Other recipes are very popular as mussels with a creamy sauce , or even curry, if you go to seafood restaurants you will most definitely be offered a large variety of recipes. French obviously have them with a glass of wine , but in Belgium people enjoy their mussels with a fresh cold beer (pils).
Now that you’ve had them and loved them you can reproduce the dish at home. It’s very easy to make, you just throw a chopped celery branch with an onion and some butter in a casserole, when it starts to get a bit brown, pour a glass of water, let it simmer and put the mussels to cook, they’re done when they’re open. Don’t forget the hand cut fries and maybe a beer, now you’re good to go.
5- Croquettes aux crevettes/Garnaalkroketten
Forget about shrimp tempura, Belgium has shrimp croquettes!
It’s basically little grey shrimps from the North Sea in bechamel sauce, rolled in breadcrumbs and fried.
It’s THE most popular entrée in Belgium, but if you’re not that fond of shrimps, just go for the cheese version , it’s as popular and delicious.
6- The Filet Americain
Maybe you’re not a seafood fan but more of a meat lover, then the Filet Americain will delight your taste buds.
French People have their famous “Steak Tartare” which is basically raw beef finely chopped with a knife, mixed altogether with Worcestershire sauce, capers, onions and topped with an egg yolk while Belgians have their “Americain”; it’s not very clear what’s in it as everybody pretty much have their own recipe but its base is ground meat, some will just use beef others will mix it with ground pork. But, no matter the recipe it is either served with fries or as a spread in sandwiches. The “Americain” sandwich is one of the most popular on-the-run lunch in Belgium.
You might feel a bit thirsty after all this food, hang in there, Belgium’s got your back with its large variety of beers.
Brewing is a secular tradition, it goes back to the Middle Ages. Nuns and monk were among the first brewers as drinking water wasn’t very safe and one could get sick very easily by drinking it back in the days. They first tried making wine but the weather wouldn’t allow it that’s why they turned to beer. Even kids used to drink beer- it was very low in alcohol back then. Beer is not only a big part in Belgium’s culture but it has entered the intangible cultural heritage of UNESCO in 2016.
Nowadays, we count over 3000 breweries in Belgium and over a thousand different beers. Breweries are either part of huge conglomerates such as ABInBev (Biggest brewing holding company in the world) or are independent just like the Brussels Beer Project for instance. Belgian beers have very different tastes and colors, they can blonde or stout, they may be rather light just like Pils (or Lager) or very strong in taste and alcohol, then Duvel would be the most famous brand (The name “Duvel” means Devil ).
Beer can even taste like peach or cherry (the infamous Kriek), but in case the large panel of different beers Belgium has to offer is not enough for you, or you feel a tad adventurous, a few people with a flourishing imagination have come up with a few “recipes” as Mazout which is beer mixed with cola , or Tango, a mixture of beer and grenadine.
Beer is also very important in the student folklore in Belgium, student’s organizations have rituals that include beer, for example : Cantus, it is an activity where student basically sing traditional songs and drink beer.
At last, Beer is not only drank, it is also very much used in traditional Belgian cuisine: Carbonades flamandes or even Lapin aux pruneaux et à la Gueuze (Rabbit cooked in beer with prune) are a good example.
Bon Appétit , Smakelijk !
If you enjoyed this article, you may also like : “International student Gilbert from Uganda opens up about homesickness:Do not always lock yourself up in your room” , “International students try Belgian food”or “Meet Hadis Mansouri (19): Thomas More’s 10.000th student”
Text & photo: © Zina Mehrez
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|Fire morel awaits mushroom lovers
The Sportsman’s Report
Mushroom lovers, this is your shot at finding the exotic fire morel.
They love to come up in the spring after a fire the year before. Hard to spot, fun to find, and the taste of fresh morel will keep you wanting more. Here is the deal, find a fire from the previous year in the area you want to foray. Then inquire about a permit from the management system of that area (not all require a permit, not all are free and some have daily limits). A citation can be expensive, upwards of $300. Many mushroom folk are shrill about the government oversight being an unnecessary evil, and they will never comply.
The intelligent fungalist takes a different view and that is management of resources, including collecting any forest product. This is a good thing. This is why we still have fish to catch, deer to hunt, abalone to pry and a long list of fruits of the forest and sea available to the public.
Last September, there was a huge fire on Cow Mountain east of Ukiah. It burned downhill nearly to Lakeport, a serious wild fire. Nearly all of the burn was on public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a part of our Federal BLM system.
The fire (Scotts Creek fire) burned the brushy chemise to a pile of ash. This is not where you are likely to find fire morels, as they tend to grow where there is still some vegetation that survived. Ideally burned understory with singed trees as over story is optimal, and the Scotts Creek Fire has this in good quantity. Because we had spring weather two months early, the chance of success is high right now. Access is a bit tricky, so you will need a map. Also, you will need a permit, issued free by the Ukiah BLM field office.
I spent time on the phone this morning with the friendly staff there to get you details on access, permit requirement and other issues. To get to their Web site, it is easiest to Google: BLM Ukiah Field Office. This will find a direct link to their Web site. There, you will find their address, phone number and free maps in PDF format. Pardee Barwell is the person who will issue you a permit. You can pick one up at the office, order one by phone, fax or request one by email, which you can then print out and sign.
Once in hand, be sure to have it with you at all times in the burn area. Each person will need his or her own permit. If you are a commercial mushroom collector, there is another whole set of requirements. For the personal use group, us, the permit is free.
I also spoke with the fire prevention specialist at the BLM office, Jeff Punnell, a very helpful man. He said they do not require an additional permit from his department, but that you should be aware of road conditions and other serious factors that might keep you out of trouble.
Jeff said access from the west side of Cow Mountain is off Mill Creek near Talmadge, which is where a map is a must. It is a long, dusty or muddy drive to the top of the fire zone and a steep climb down into the zone without road access. The bottom of the fire access is from Scotts Valley Road to the bottom of Dren Eden Trail. Well marked and steep, the first portion of the trail is through private property not open to the public. The trail goes right through the burn.
For more information on how to identify a morel, go to www.mykoweb.com and search ‘California Species Index’ and drill down to ‘morels.’ You will find great information on the morel family with lots of photos. One thing about the tasty morel, it is poisonous. The chemical signature of the poisonous part is heat volatile and is dissipated with cooking. I like to simmer them in a wine, shallot cream sauce for about 20 minutes. My good friend, the late Chris Beck, loved to collect them and cut open the fist-sized morels, make a stuffing (think French Duxelle) and baked them with a butter baste, a taste exotic and heavenly. Morel are one of the mushrooms that dehydrates well.
I have kept them for years after drying in canning jars and been happy with the taste. They also freeze, but be sure to cook them before they go into the freezer bags.
Morel are notoriously difficult to clean. Slice down the middle, as they are hollow, and gently wash them in a sink of water. A fine sand will appear in the drained sink. Repeat until there is almost no sand and refill your sink again, but add a teaspoon of salt for every gallon of cold water. Gently agitate, this will usually get the last bit of stubborn grit off your mushrooms.
Dry them in a rack or on a towel and proceed to the sauté pan or food dehydrator. If you would like to hold one in your hand before you go, the best source is the local supermarket. They usually have the dried version in small bags for sale. The price is as shocking as they are tasty.
Contact information for the Ukiah BLM office at (707) 468-4000. Punnell’s extension is 4053 and Barwell’s extension is 4055.
Bill Hanson is a Sonoma County native and a lifelong sportsman. He is the former president of the Sonoma County Mycological Association. Look for his column in The Community Voice each week.
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Finding Books in HillSearch
Conducting a basic search in HillSearch
HillSearch uses Keyword Searching in one box.
Enter search terms (Title, Author, topic) in the box. Press Enter or click the arrow button.
Results that most closely match your search terms are listed first as the “Most Relevant” results.
These include materials the library owns. You can sort the list alphabetically by title or by date published.
The more often the search terms occur in an item's record, the more relevant that item is to the search.
The most recently published item in each section of relevancy will be listed at the top.
SEARCH TIP: When searching for a one word title, include a part of the author's name or a word describing the subject of the book to retrieve better results. Sometimes, a very specific search by title or author will be more successful if you use the Advanced Search.
HillSearch Results Page
Once you have conducted an initial search, the search box on the results page looks like this:
- The word "Catalog" is black. This means we are searching the catalog. If you want to search for articles, click the "Articles" link. "Articles" will then become black and you will see results from an article search.
- Your original search terms appear in the search box.
- There is always a link to the "Advanced Search” under the search box, which allows a more specific search.
- You can execute a new search by clicking the arrow button.
Brief Display of Items on Search Results Page
Your search term and the number of results returned appear at the top of the results list
- The default sort is by Relevance. Click "Title" or "Date" to re-sort the search results. The most current material is listed first.
- The title is linked; clicking it will take you to the full bibliographic record.
- The location shows where to find an item, and its call number. The location name is a link describing its physical location.
- AVAILABLE means that the item has not been checked out and should be available for use.
One of the key features of HillSearch is what are called facets. The column on the left of the search results provides facets which can be used to narrow your search results.
Choosing carefully will allow you to eliminate results that are not what you are looking for.
Each Refining "Facet" displays the number of items that will be included on your search results page if you use it.
Search tip: When you are Searching for Books, remember that the format “Print” is used for books.
Definitions of HillSearch Facets:
Availability: Shows items that you can access either on the shelf or as ebooks. (Includes library use only, e.g. Reference materials and materials in other locations on campus.)
Search found in: Click Title or Author or Subject to return items that have your specific search term in one of these fields.
Format: Use the Format options to specify what type of material you want. The word “Print” is the term used to describe Books.
Location: Select a Location(s) for the materials; if you already know where it is, for instance, if you only want DVDs you can limit the location to “Media Collection.”
Language: Choose the desired language the material is written or spoken in. Films dubbed in multiple languages may display the title in English.
Publish Date: If you know the year in which the item you want was published, this facet allows you to limit results to items published only in that year.
Course: This retrieves only materials placed on Reserve. Refine by selecting the course number of your class.
Professor: This retrieves only materials placed on Reserve. Choose the name of the Professor who put the item on Reserve.
Tag: Lists keywords in all the records retrieved in the current search.
Place: Limits based on the geographic area the material is about.
SEARCH TIP: Facets are an excellent way to narrow your search results, both if you know exactly what you want, and if you are starting with very broad search terms. Be careful not to choose too many facets at one time though, as this can make it seem that there are no relevant resources, when in fact you may need to try a new search and adjust your search terms.
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For our readers who don’t know, MDMA is short for 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine. MDMA is an illegal drug that can act like a stimulant and a psychedelic. Common slang terms used for this drug are “Ecstasy,” “E,” and “molly.”
As for your specific question, it is possible to have a seizure from taking MDMA, even if it is not combined with alcohol or any other drugs. Seizures are one of many risks associated with MDMA use. According to NIDA for Teens, risks associated with MDMA use can include the following:
TeenHealthFX would like to elaborate on the first point made above since this is a critical issue with many different drugs. Keep in mind that there are no quality control measures in terms of guaranteeing the purity of various types of drugs, including MDMA. MDMA is usually made in illegal laboratories, basements and garages – and these tablets can easily be cut or mixed with other psychoactive substances. Substances found mixed with MDMA include heroin, ketamine, and ephedrine (herbal ecstasy). So when you take MDMA, you won’t know everything you’re taking.
TeenHealthFX can give you the general facts about the dangers associated with MDMA use. But what has FX really concerned is that you are considering using this drug (or any kind of drug for that matter) after seeing that your body reacted to drugs in such a serious and potentially dangerous way as having a seizure. FX is concerned why using drugs is so important to you, especially given how you were affected the last time you used. FX thinks it would be very helpful for you to reflect on why it is so important to use drugs knowing the harm that drugs can cause and have already caused, and to consider speaking to your parents, a school counselor, or a private therapist about your drug habits before anything else happens to you.
If you live in northern New Jersey and need help finding a therapist you can call the Access Center from Atlantic Behavioral Health at 888-247-1400. Outside of this area you can log onto the US Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website for referrals in your area. You can also contact your insurance company to get a list of in-network mental health providers or check with your school social worker or psychologist to get a list of referrals in your area.
You and your parents could also review NIDA’s information on Drug Abuse Treatment.
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Like many great Internet discoveries, Phillipe Cantin's journey started at Stack Exchange. He and his fellow LEGO fans have been working together in a beta forum about the toy brick, hoping the space would attract an audience and stick around. Last fall, Cantin posted that he wanted more insight from a Daily Finance article about why LEGO items were so expensive. The piece cited the use of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) in LEGO bricks, a plastic that "requires petroleum as a raw material, [so] the cost of the plastic closely tracks the price of oil." LEGO, the article continued, feels compelled to use ABS due to its strength and resilience, two prominent factors in a brick's "clutch power"—the ability for pieces to snap together tightly while simultaneously being easy to separate.
That's where the question came in. "Since a LEGO brick is ABS plastic and will wear with use," Cantin wrote, "I wonder how many times you can assemble and dis-assemble two pieces before they no longer stay together." A few responses came in immediately, but they were mostly anecdotal. Cantin admitted that unless data was already available, he had a plan all along: build a robotic rig to determine the maximum "clutch power."
Cantin took to his workshop. He had to scrap his first design entirely when a metal tube attaching a servo-motor to a LEGO brick proved too flimsy (it died during initial testing). Ultimately, though, his final design only took two hours to conceptualize and build.
The entire setup is described in the video above (and shown in motion around the 2:45m mark). Cantin opted for an old CPU heat sink and, using an angle cutter, turned that into his new robotic arm. The rig uses the CPU heat sink arm to lift and drop the upper brick for the experiment. A servo-motor (running on a separate, nine volt power supply) holds and then releases the bottom brick to test "clutch power." There's an infrared sensor—which Cantin built himself—that determines whether the bottom brick does indeed lift and remain attached. Finally, an Arduino Uno controls the entire operation while logging each impression to a microSD card.
In his introduction video, Cantin said he was "not very happy with the engineering" for his ultimate rig but was "anxious to make something happen" with the testing. He felt the setup was too slow since one iteration took about 10 seconds (so ultimately, building it took way less time than using it). It was also potentially weak in his eyes. Cantin felt the hardware would fail well before the LEGO bricks did. Finally, the whole rig created a lot of commotion. "Don't try this at home," he warned on his blog. "It's long, noisy, and cruel to LEGO bricks." Cantin ran the whole thing anyway and, 10 days later, had his answer.
It took 37,112 impressions for the LEGO bricks—in this test alignment—to lose "clutch power."
“My daughter had a hard time sleeping because she could hear the robot even down in the basement," he told Ars. "I was happy when it finally stopped.”
Cantin's work ended in late February, but it caught the eyes of Arduino's official blog this week. With the added exposure, fellow LEGO fans had plenty of questions. Cantin released the video below to reveal further experiment details. He used a pair of 2x3 LEGO bricks because the piece is among the most basic and recognizable LEGO blocks (plus it has a better studs-to-weight ratio than say a 2x4 rectangle or the smaller squares). And this particular test used pieces from the 1970s, but that's because it was step one in Cantin's larger idea.
Cantin didn't think his initial experiment would take this long so he originally prepared to do nine tests in total: three using blocks from the 1970s, three with pieces from the 1990s, and three with current-day bricks. "I figured I'd do all my tests and plot that on a nice graph, because that would be something more meaningful statistically," he said. "But after the first test I realized I have to build a new rig all together. First of all, it's too long. And I didn't like the way the blocks were being assembled by the motion of the rotation; it's not a natural way to put LEGO bricks together. Pushing down in a straight matter makes more sense and maybe it's going to wear the bricks differently."
Cantin still has plans to move forward. "I like that number—37,000—but I want to see the answer." Regardless, he found value in the initial experiment. Friends estimated a LEGO brick would only last 400 to 500 impressions, Cantin himself thought the number would be more in the area of 5,000. "But there's no way a LEGO could be worn from this test. Cracking them or stepping on them is how they get broken."
Cantin is a Canadian senior software developer and this isn't his first foray into LEGO or Arduino. With LEGO, Cantin said he's been using them since he was young and never grew out of it. He worked with his young son to add working lights to the child's favorite LEGO robot and hopes to work on a tabletop robot game in the future. Previously, Cantin even used a similar Arduino-LEGO combination to responded to another LEGO Stack Exchange question. (Forum posters wanted to know if LEGO city-scale wheels could be motorized. Short answer: yes.) But if others were interested in recreating this particular experiment, he believes it's very accessible. All it takes are basic servo-controls, the SD logger available in various online libraries, and infrared detectors that can be purchased for the less hardcore.
If and when Cantin continues his research, you can be sure to find results popping up on the LEGO Stack Exchange and possibly the Arduino blog. But so far, no word from LEGO. Cantin does keep an eye on the Google Analytics for his site though, and unofficially he believes some traffic has come from the LEGO powers-that-be. "It would be nice if they contacted me, I would love that," he said. "To me, it'd be a childhood dream."
Listing image by flickr user: Molinary
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Rethinking Capitalism: How Very Enterprising
This week I attended the Washington premiere of Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story." It was my first trip ever down the red carpet, and I was a bit disappointed that "Entertainment Tonight" wasn't there to comment on my wardrobe (black jacket over open-collared tattersall shirt) or get my reaction to the film ("Entertaining propaganda -- * *.") But, hey, it's not every day you get to watch a documentary about the housing crisis and Wall Street greed while sitting across the aisle from Frank Raines, the ousted chairman of Fannie Mae. Frank didn't stick around for the big after-party. Neither did I.
Moore's "love story" is really an oversimplified political melodrama based on half-truths, innuendo, fuzzy thinking and imagined conspiracies, held together by some genuinely funny gags, such as Moore wrapping a crime-scene tape around the New York Stock Exchange or backing up an armored car to the front door of Goldman Sachs with the intention of retrieving the bailout money it got from the government.
The fundamental fallacy of the film is its assertion that Moore's home town of Flint, Mich., is somehow a metaphor for the rest of the American economy, a middle-class idyll transformed into an industrial wasteland by corporate executives so intent on breaking unions that they deliberately destroyed their own companies. In the World According to Moore, Silicon Valley and Seattle and the middle-class oasis of Orange County, Calif., simply don't exist. He even manages to spin a populist fantasy that last year's financial meltdown was, in fact, a faux-crisis manufactured by Wall Street to railroad Congress into passing a $700 billion bailout and to engineer a financial "coup d'etat."
The curious thing about this movie, however, is that while many of its small points are exaggerated or misinformed, Moore's largest point is essentially correct: that the economic system no longer works for the majority of Americans.
For me, the most powerful moments in the movie weren't the interviews with displaced homeowners, laid-off workers or grieving widows, but those with a trio of Catholic clergymen who minced no words in declaring the moral bankruptcy of modern American capitalism. It was clear they had come to their conclusions not from any radical ideology or deep understanding of economics but from the inequity and insensitivity they observed in their parishes. As it happens, their outrage is shared by their boss, Pope Benedict XVI.
"Profit is useful if it serves as a means toward an end," declared the pope in an encyclical issued by the Vatican this summer. "Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty." Benedict decried the "speculative use of financial resources that yields to the temptation of seeking only short-term profit, without regard to the long-term sustainability of the enterprise and its benefit to the real economy."
What's going on here is not simply the moralizing of clerics and filmmakers. Nor, I think, is it merely a reflection of the difficult economy. After nearly two decades of booms and busts that have yielded little in the way of economic gain for the typical household, Americans have developed a profound distrust of the markets, financiers, big business and the capitalist ethos.
I got a taste of that last week when I attended a day-long ceremony celebrating the opening of the Center for Social Value Creation at the University of Maryland's business school. The school's dean, Anand Anandalingam, explained that the impetus for the center came not from the administration or even the faculty but from business students who were looking for more meaning and social purpose in their careers than simply making a lot of money for themselves and for shareholders.
The first speaker was Seth Goldman, the founder of Bethesda-based Honest Tea, who was treated as something of a rock star by the students who packed the auditorium. Goldman doesn't apologize for getting rich by selling healthy, organic beverages, or taking on as his partner and largest investor Coca-Cola, a company best known for peddling sugared and caffeinated beverages. As Goldman explained to the audience -- and later in a video interview for The Post's On Leadership Web site -- his aim is to change the culture and values of the beverage industry before they change him.
Alan Webber, the founder of Fast Company magazine, got a round of applause from the Maryland students when he declared that in a knowledge economy, the way companies compete is to attract the best talent -- talent that these days is motivated less by money than the desire to work in a place where they can learn, grow and have an impact on the world.
Also on hand was Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard Business School professor who has been celebrating the achievements of Corporate America for decades. Kanter is still celebrating, but these days she's cheering for companies that have gone beyond maximizing shareholder value, and even beyond corporate social responsibility, to embrace a more ambitious mission of the world's problems. In a new book, "SuperCorp," she argues that companies that imbue their culture with a social ethic wind up making more money for their shareholders, not only because their employees are more motivated but also because their focus on a transcendent external goal makes them less resistant to internal change.
None of this is meant to suggest that a new form of capitalism is about to take hold. But it is a reminder that the big reason capitalism has proven the least-bad economic system is that it is best at correcting its own excesses. After all, only in a capitalist country can you turn a profit making movies about the evils of capitalism.
Steven Pearlstein can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org.
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Message: I invite you to join me in seeking the counsel of God.
This Sunday I would like to introduce a series of homilies on seeking God's counsel. We are at the beginning of a new school year - and in our parish we are continuing a two-year study of the Bible in our Generations of Faith.
The reading from the Book of Wisdom helps to understand why it is important for us to know the Bible. It begins by underscoring the limitations of human knowledge.
First, we have only a limited understanding of our natural world. "Scarce do we guess the things on earth," says Wisdom. Who imagined that North Dakota would become our oil capital!?* And what about the material world itself? When I was in high school it seemed fairly simply. We learned that everything was made of atoms - each one had a nucleus with electrons circling it like planets going around the sun. Today students learn about quarks (six "flavors"), leptons (also six "flavor"), gluons (eight) and, of course, the Higgs boson. And if that's not enough, some physicists speculate that the whole universe is made up of some kind of string. The more scientists discover about the material world the more mysterious it seems. Scarce do we guess the things on earth.
The make-up of the material world is mysterious. So is personal experience. Even those things "within our grasp we find with difficulty." I'm sure you have had the experience of being with a family when one member starts describing some significant past event. Another member jumps in and says, "No, that's not the way it happened." Even things close to us we know only with difficulty.
So the author of Wisdom says that if we cannot know the precise nature of visible things or even of events we have personally experienced, how can we understand the invisible, divine wisdom - what he calls the "counsel of God." Like you, I often wonder about suffering, disease and death. Why does one person die young, while someone else lives an extended life? It does not make sense that some suffer terribly (e.g. civilians, children in Syria) while others seems to get off easy.
The Book of Wisdom asks those questions, but it does not sink into skepticism or despair. If you read the entire book, you will see that it give a surprise answer: Although our lives seem like an unsolvable puzzle, a mystery we can never understand, still we can know something of the God's counsel, of his design. Not by our own intelligence, but because he has chosen to freely reveal something of himself to us. Read the whole Book of Wisdom and you will see that it offers an extended reflection on God's revelation and how it applies to us.
I would like to do something similar in the coming weeks. Obviously, I cannot offer anything as in-depth as the Book of Wisdom, but I would like to propose a simple way of understanding God's counsel, his revelation to us. It is called the "Geography of Faith." I learned it from a fine bishop - Bishop Liam Cary. He is bishop of Eastern Oregon. With such a huge territory, he travels a lot and uses that time to pray, learn from CD's and prepare his mind to give retreats and sermons. He has developed a beautiful way of understanding the Bible and how it applies to our lives. He calls it the Geography of Faith.**
It happens that next Sunday's Old Testament reading mentions the three basic countries (or places) in that geography. Learning about them will help you make sense of the Bible - and most important, make sense of your own life. Geography of Faith will relate most directly to young people - but all of us will benefit. I encourage you to return next Sunday to learn more.
So, for this Sunday we hear Wisdom describe the limits of human understanding. And the great question: Who can know the counsel of God? Who can conceive what the Lord intends? The answer is that we can only know what he chooses to reveal to us. I invite you to join me in seeking the counsel of God. We will do that by exploring the Geography of Faith. As today's Psalm says, "Teach us...that we may gain wisdom of heart." Amen.
*As of February, the state had 8,500 wells and was producing about 779,000 barrels of oil per day. With the current technology, each well is expected to produce for about 30 years, and each one will produce about 550,000 barrels of oil. http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/04/north-dakota-oil-facts/
**To fellow homilists: Unless you had a similar conversation with Bishop Cary or attended one of his retreats, you will want to say something acknowledging, "Bishop Liam Cary has developed the concept of a Geography of Faith." You can find videos of his retreat at Youtube by searching for "Bishop Liam Cary Geography of Faith." Here is the link for the first video of seven. Well worth watching.
From Archives (Homilies for Twenty-Third Sunday, Year C):
Seapadre Homilies: Cycle A, Cycle B, Cycle C
Audio Files of Homilies (Simple Catholicism Blog)
Are these homilies a help to you? Please consider making a donation to St. Mary of the Valley Parish.
Bishop Bob Barron's Homilies
Fr. Brad's Homilies
Fr. Jim's Homilies
Fr. Michael White's Homilies ("messages")
Bulletin (St. Mary's Parish)
Parish Picture Album
Resources for Geography of Faith
An excellent 12 minute homily by Archbishop Sartain, followed by Creed and Prayers of Faithful. Also has original song by Susan Howard beginning at 17:28. Warning: best not to watch on Youtube because of an unsavory ad on the side.
Bulletin (St. Mary's Parish)
Parish Picture Album
MBC - Mary Bloom Center, Puno, Peru
KRA's & SMART Goals (updated September 2013)
A Homilist's Prayer
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In which Scrabble dictionary does QUADRATE exist?
Definitions of QUADRATE in dictionaries:
- noun -
a cubelike object
- noun -
a square-shaped object
- adj -
having four sides and four angles
A square or cube.
An approximately square or cubic area, space, or object.
A bone or cartilaginous structure of the skull, joining the upper and lower jaws in birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians.
Having four sides and four angles; square or rectangular.
Designating the quadrate bone or cartilage.
- verb -
to correspond or agree
There are 8 letters in QUADRATE:
A A D E Q R T U
Scrabble words that can be created with an extra letter added to QUADRATE
All anagrams that could be made from letters of word QUADRATE plus a
Scrabble words that can be created with letters from word QUADRATE
8 letter words
7 letter words
6 letter words
5 letter words
4 letter words
3 letter words
2 letter words
Images for QUADRATELoading...
SCRABBLE is the registered trademark of Hasbro and J.W. Spear & Sons Limited. Our scrabble word finder and scrabble cheat word builder is not associated with the Scrabble brand - we merely provide help for players of the official Scrabble game. All intellectual property rights to the game are owned by respective owners in the U.S.A and Canada and the rest of the world. Anagrammer.com is not affiliated with Scrabble. This site is an educational tool and resource for Scrabble & Words With Friends players.
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skip to content
The Sri Chinmoy Library
About the author
Conversations with Sri Chinmoy
Question: What role do discipline and obedience play?
Discipline and obedience in the spiritual life are of paramount importance.
Sri Chinmoy, Conversations with Sri Chinmoy,
Agni Press, 2007
‹ Question: How important is it to follow a Guru and what should distinguish such a Teacher?
Question: What does Yoga mean for you and what is the benefit of meditating regularly? ›
Table of contents
Report typographical errors
Translations of this page:
This page can be cited using cite-key
This work is licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
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BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss government 25 May opened for public review the proposed initial regulations drawn up by a working group, that result from a popular vote in March 2012 to limit the number of second homes in the country.
The vote called for a 20 percent cap on second homes in any commune, but developing the ordinances has been fraught with heated discussions about what precisely the Swiss voted on.
Canton Valais, which has a particularly high number of small communes where the number of second homes is well over 50 percent, has been pushing for clarity on several of the issues: when the law goes into effect, whether or not it affects existing second homes and the impact on inheritance.
Thursday Bern said that two options are being proposed for the law to go into effect, 1 September 2012 and 1 January 2013. The first would allow communes to continue giving building permits until September, in theory.
It also noted that “buildings that have been constructed and used in line with legislation in effect before 11 March 2012 must be able to continue to be used in the same way that was legally admissible on the date when the new constitutional law was accepted. Existing homes must be able to be freely sold and handed on through inheritance.”
Bern also clarified the definition of a second home: one that is not the legal domicile of the people living there.
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Date Added: May 2013
In cognitive radio systems, the secondary user senses a spectrum band formally allocated to the primary user and utilizes free spectrum bands or white spaces for its transmissions. In this paper, the effect of secondary service optimal power allocation on cognitive radio systems has been investigated. They have formulated and solved an optimization problem with the objective of maximizing the secondary service's capacity. They have also investigated the effect of having optimal power allocation against constant power allocation on secondary service capacity and the primary service outage probability degradation.
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A zoo also known as a zoological park or zoological garden is a facility where predominately rare or endangered animal species are kept within enclosures and displayed to the public. The animals may also breed and adapt to their new environments. Most zoological gardens are not only opened for public viewings and educational purposes but also for scientific studies. More than 180 million people visit the zoos every year in the US alone. There are different types of zoos including the Safari park, aquaria, roadside zoos, petting zoos, and animal theme parks. In the US, any facility that is identified as a zoo or public animal exhibit must be inspected and licensed. In addition, North American zoos have the choice to pursue membership for the accreditation by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). The following is an overview of zoos within the United States that have been operating the longest.
The Oldest Zoos In The United States
Museum of Science
The Museum of Science is situated in Science Park in Boston, Massachusetts, and has over 700 interactive exhibits featuring a wide array of life presentations every day. The Museum of Science (MoS) is home to more than a 100 animal species many of whom have not only been rescued but also been rehabilitated from various threatening environments. The museum is an accredited member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). The Museum of Science originally began in 1830 as the Boston Society of Natural History. In 1862, following a series of temporary facilities the society decided to construct a facility in the Back Bay area of Boston and was dubbed '"New England Museum of Natural History".
Most of the scientific work done by the society revolved around geology and can be found online. Around 1900, children's rooms and a library were added to the museum which was later renamed the Museum of Science under a new director in 1939. Since 2013, the museum has been going through renovations in attempts to upgrade the physical structure of the building and develop new informative material. The Museum of Science is believed to be the oldest museum in the United States.
The Philadelphia Zoo is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is believed to have been the first true zoo found in the United States. The Philadelphia Zoo was authorized on March 21, 1859, by Pennsylvania's Commonwealth, however due to the American Civil War the opening was delayed until July 1st, 1874. The zoo, whose admission price was 25 cents, opened with 1,000 animal species. The Philadelphia Zoo is one of the first zoos in the world known for breeding animals that had been deemed difficult to breed while in captivity. The zoo collaborates with various groups worldwide for the protection of animals and their natural habitat. At present the zoo covers an area of 17 hectares and is a habitat for more than 1,300 animal species many of which are either endangered or rare or both.
The main features of the zoo include a rain forest themed carousel, a children's zoo, a paddleboat lake, among other interactive and informative artifacts. On December 24th, 1995, there was a fire outbreak in the World of Primates killing 23 animals of endangered species which included ten lemurs, a family group of three orangutans, six lowland gorillas, and four white handed gibbons. All animals died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. The zoo consists of the Rare Animal Conservation Centre, the Reptile, and Amphibian House, Small Mammal House, Carnivore Kingdom, African Plains among others.
Central Park Zoo
The Central Park Zoo, managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), is a 2.6 hectare zoo located in Central Park, New York City and is an accredited member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Central Park Zoo was established in 1864, as a menagerie making it the third oldest zoo in the United States and the first official zoo opened in New York City. In 1934, the zoo was modified and new buildings erected a quadrangle around the sea lion pool. During this time, the zoo was commonly referred as the Robert Moses Zoo or the 1934 Zoo. The zoo was finally renovated between the mid and late 1980's and late reopened in 1988, featuring more naturalistic habitats. Some of the Central Park Zoo features include a polar bear pool, chilled penguin house, and an indoor rain forest among others. The zoo facilitates breeding programs for a number of endangered species such the thick-billed parrots, tamarin monkeys, red pandas, and the Wyoming toads. The zoo's rainforests are home to fruit bats and consists of a large area of free flight for the birds. Other features include the snow leopard exhibit which was opened in June 2009 and a children's zoo.
Lincoln Park Zoo
The Lincoln Park Zoo is located in Lincoln Park in Chicago, Illinois. The zoo was founded in 1868 and is considered to be the fourth oldest zoo in North America. The zoo, which covers an area of 14 hectares, is one of the few zoos in United States where admission is free. Lincoln Park Zoo is also an accredited member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The zoo is home to a wide array of animal species including monkeys, polar bears, reptiles, gorillas, big cats, and other species bringing the estimated number of animals to approximately 1,100 animals. The burred oak tree is also found in Lincoln Park Zoo dating its existence to 1830 three years before the city was founded. The zoo features a number of exhibits including the Regenstein Birds of Prey, Helen Brach Primate House, Antelope and Zebra Area, Waterfowl Lagoon, Kovler Sea Lion Pool Regenstein Center for African Apes, Kovler Lion House, McCormick Bird House, and the Pritzker Family Children's Zoo among others.
Importance Of Zoos
The main objective for zoos is the conservation of endangered species together with education and research purposes. Entertainment for visitors in the form of tourism is a secondary objective for the establishment of zoos. Zoos also act as breeding facilities especially for endangered species making them a key component for the conservation of endangered species. Zoos are suitable habitats for wild birds such as herons and they also provide ample information about the animals living and being studied in the facilities.
The Oldest Zoos in the United States
|Rank||Zoo Name||Year Constructed||Location||Status (2017)|
|1||Museum of Science||1830||Boston, MA||Open|
|2||Philadelphia Zoo||1859||Philadelphia, PA||Open|
|3||Central Park Zoo||1864||New York, NY||Open|
|4||Lincoln Park Zoo||1868||Chicago, IL||Open|
|5||Rogers William Park Zoo||1872||Providence, RI||Open|
|6||Cincinnati, OH||1873||Cincinnati, OH||Open|
|7||Buffalo Zoo||1875||Buffalo, NY||Open|
|8||Maryland Zoo||1876||Baltimore, MD||Open|
|9||Detroit Zoo||1883||Detroit, MI||Open|
|10||Dallas Zoo||1888||Dallas, TX||Open|
|11||Denver Zoo||1896||Denver, CO||Open|
|12||Bronx Zoo||1899||Bronx, NY||Open|
|13||Toledo Zoo||1900||Toledo, OH||Open|
|14||Memphis Zoo||1906||Memphis, TN||Open|
|15||Kansas City Zoo||1909||Kansas City, MO||Open|
|16||Franklin Park Zoo||1912||Boston, MA||Open|
|17||Jackson Zoo||1919||Jackson, MS||Open|
|18||Lake Superior Zoo||1923||Duluth, MN||Open|
|19||Alexandria Zoological Park||1926||Alexandria, LA||Open|
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In Breda (NL), the temperature was measured at various places in the city during one of the hottest weeks at the end of June. This happened in the context of the Cool Towns project.
Heat can be experienced as a problem by the residents of Breda, both outdoor and indoors. The municipality of Breda is focused on the liveability of the public spaces. To map heat issues, heat stress maps have been drawn up to indicate where heat is a problem in the (inner) city of Breda
Measuring in the city and online
Measurements were taken at different places in the city according to a fixed measurement protocol. In addition to the measurements (temperature, humidity), surveys were also conducted.
At the same time, a survey was conducted online via the Facebook page of the Municipality of Breda.
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When the popular science video blog Veritasium posted its "Facebook Fraud" video, it got many marketers concerned about just how much ad fraud there is on Facebook. In fact, it has almost 1.5 million views on Facebook already, highlighting the concern that many people have about the legitimacy of Facebook advertising.
The video goes over several cases where they are paying for Facebook ads in order to generate likes but they are finding that the percentage of engagement of those likes is almost nonexistent:
One of the major issues is that Facebook ads are generating a lot of likes from Facebook profiles of users who have also liked thousands of other things. But why are so many Facebook ads liked when the user actually has absolutely zero interest in whatever the Facebook advertiser is offering or selling and is just one of thousands of things they liked? The problem lies with all the spam profiles that are strictly there to power paid likes sold by third-party websites.
If ProfileA is paid by a third-party website (or is one created by the third-party seller itself) to like 50 different pages, they need to be able to disguise those paid likes so that Facebook is unable to determine whether it was a genuine or paid like. So what ProfileA does is goes and likes hundreds and hundreds of other pages to dilute the percentage of those paid likes on their account. They click likes at random, without engaging or even reading what they are liking, and that means that a lot of those paid Facebook ads get likes simply because it’s a spammer trying to hide the number of paid Likes they had to do.
While the video also highlights some public tests that have been made previously and what they found, how accurate is it really? What are other marketers are seeing, who might be a bit more Facebook ad savvy?
Conrad Salvador, director of social media at Internet Media Labs, saw similar behavior on one of the pages he is running.
"They have over 179,000 likes, and it keeps growing 'organically'," Salvador said. "The majority of the engagement is coming from the countries mentioned in the video. And when I analyzed their profiles, it matched the user behavior that was touched on. The profiles are not real profiles. Just setup to like and share sporadically."
And lastly, another part of the problem is a Facebook Page owner has no recourse to get rid of the likes from profiles that are obviously strictly spam profiles. So when any post they make gets only a small fraction of engagement across their total likes, chances are pretty good that many of those spam profiles are going to end up in that small percent.
Even worse, if Page owners pay Facebook to get additional exposure, again the chances of the Facebook ad being displayed to their followers who are actually spam profiles is fairly high. And those are spam profiles that have zero interest in their page or anything they post because they were simply liked in the first place to hide paid likes.
It's easy to see which profiles are spamming, because they often have liked thousands and thousands of Facebook pages, which isn't something the average Facebook user does. But again, you can’t force those people that unlike your page so that you can increase your engagement across true fans of your page. And unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that Facebook is doing much in the way of reducing the number of a spam profiles that are doing paid likes, despite their assurances that they are.
Anyone using Facebook ads at the very least should target only specific countries, so that they don’t get high percentage of likes that people are seeing from countries such as Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. This will solve some of the problems, although not all of them. And clearly there are issues with likes happening from countries outside of the geo-targeted areas.
Julie Pippert, founder and director of Artful Media Group, saw exactly this behavior when using Facebook ads for a hyperlocal page.
"I launched a new page for a local social media group I started," she said. "I targeted ads hyperlocally, even though it meant a smaller ad reach. It just made sense to only reach people who would join a local group and attend our monthly meetings."
"It did net a few people, but it also pulled some from other countries," Pippert said. "That did not make any sense to me, and it concerned me that despite my settings (and paying!) my ad was not reaching the right eyes. I did try a few different iterations, but each one got these geographic outliers. So I definitely saw what the video described.
Merry Morud, Social Advertising Director at aimClear, has been wary of many aspects of Facebook's advertising offerings. She has noticed that Facebook’s geotargeting leaves much to be desired, and defaults to having your Facebook ads shown to countries that are known to have like farms. "That said, when I actually tried the 'Boost Post' and 'Promote' page, I was SHOCKED at what Facebook decided to automatically target," Morud said.
What does Morud suggest to compensate for how Facebook runs their advertising?
"If your goal is to grow real likes, we recommend using Facebook Page Post Ads to promote content from your website coupled with thoughtful, strategic targeting," she said. "This tactic earns you traffic to your site (the thing you actually own! You don't own your Facebook Page). Social engagement is crucial for EdgeRank, and new followers that are actually interested in you and your content."
Marc Poirier, co-founder & EVP, business development of Acquisio, feels that generating likes should not be the goal of any Facebook advertising.
"Marketers need to manage their spend on Facebook as a function of real business metrics, if they can't measure sales or conversions, then at least make sure to manage bids and budgets as a function of user engagement," he said. "Managing only for likes will generate terrible results like those discussed in the video."
Bottom line: if you're planning to do any Facebook advertising, ensure that your targeting only the countries you are primarily doing business in, and avoid those countries that have a lot of paid like activity.
Another stopgap measure would be to allow pages to unlike the spam profiles, that is also a tremendous amount of work, and it also opens up a whole area where third-party sites can then "audit" for spam profiles. But it could potentially alleviate some of the issues for site owners who want to advertise to their followers, but not the spammers.
These things could hopefully lessen the impact of the spam profiles on Facebook ads. Until we see some sort of implementation in place, similar to click fraud detection by Google AdWords, where advertisers aren't paying for the exposure to the spam profiles, it’s going to be a real issue going forward.
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Many who follow CFACT’s participation in the UN climate talks will recall that Russia blocked a crucial negotiating track at the UN’s subsidiary climate talks held in Bonn in June. The Russian move caused the most important part of the talks to collapse. No real business could be conducted. Read Climate talks Collapse!
In the topsy-turvy world of UN climate politics, Russia, joined by Ukraine, Belarus and other nations of the former Soviet Union have become the champions of democratic process.
On October 28th, Russia sent a strongly worded letter [Read it here] to the UNFCCC secretariat decrying the UN’s use of “consensus” rather than permitting nations to vote on matters as important as conference outcomes. “Decision-making in the UNFCCC process has suffered evident setbacks over the past few years with serious procedural and legal flaws being multiplied, transparency eroding, frequency of dubious proceedings acquiring alarming magnitude and conduct of business deviating” from UNFCCC rules, Russia said.
“Consensus” has become perhaps the most abused word in the global warming dictionary. Many are familiar with the oft-repeated propaganda talking point claiming some huge number (97% being the latest) of scientists as being on board with extreme global warming views. The global warming consensus talking point has long been debunked, yet keeps cropping up. We even heard it recently from the lips of the President of the United States.
The “consensus” the Russians are talking about is still worse. Top officials at the climate talks, finding due process and democracy to be tiresome wastes of time, have dispensed with formal voting and resorted to gaveling through back-room agreements even on final conference outcomes.
As COP 18 in Doha drew to a close, the presiding officer gaveled down the Russian delegation which was furiously seeking to be recognized. Representatives of other countries including India, Venezuela, Bolivia report being denied recognition, threatened or coerced at prior conferences.
E.U. Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard was not sympathetic to Russia’s case saying, “It would be irresponsible and reckless if we let the Warsaw COP get drowned in procedural issues. What we need to discuss is real action and real commitments. The rest – it’s not that it’s uninteresting but it should not be at the centre stage.” Commissioner Hedegaard appears ready to cede the sovereignty of nations and vast sums of money to the UN in the name of global warming with little regard for process and without voting.
Russia’s objections though noble in principle are actually motivated by national interest. As CFACT reported from Bonn, Russia is concerned with the “hot air” issue. Russia was not at all pleased when the UN COP pulled the plug in Doha on all the emissions credits Russia had acquired under the first Kyoto treaty and told Russia it couldn’t carry them forward. Russia, which has announced that it will not be part of a second commitment period for the Kyoto protocol and has signaled a reluctance to sign on in Paris, wants to keep its credits anyway. Russia would like to sell its old credits to the countries which do sign aboard and would be paid effectively for nothing but hot air.
Moreover, Russia accrued the carbon credits it is so set on retaining as a reward for its economy lagging behind the west’s during Russia’s long period of communism and it’s painful transition to the present. As CFACT observed in Bonn, the notion that Russia deserves compensation for inflicting communism on Eastern Europe is bizarre at best. If anything, Russia should be compensating Poland, the rest of the Warsaw block and a host of developing nations which had their prosperity stymied by communism for generations.
As COP 19 opens tomorrow morning, we will learn more about whether Russia was able to gain sufficient concessions in closed negotiations before the conference to placate it. Will Russia drop or table its objections? Russia was willing to shut down a subsidiary meeting in Bonn. Is Russia willing to do the same to a full-blown UN conference of the parties?
If Russia drops its objections, could the Warsaw outcome and ultimately the UN’s long sought climate treaty of Paris be adopted with world nations never being given the opportunity of actually voting?
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The northern lights glowed along the horizon as we left the tent at 5 a.m., trudging up easy snow slopes toward Mount Kitchener. Every now and then I could hear a big chunk of icefall breaking off a serac to our right and crashing down the mountain in the dark.
I was climbing with Barry Blanchard, a noted Canadian alpinist, heading up a route called Grand Central Couloir, a steep, technical gully that splits the north face of Kitchener. Barry had climbed the couloir once before, in 1982, back when he admits he didn't know all that much about avalanche conditions. It's a route that's been on my list for years now.
We reached the base of a steep snow field. Barry dug a pit to test the slope stability. About three feet down, recent snow was poorly bonded to a lower layer, shearing off cleanly when disturbed by the shovel—or, perhaps, a climber.
We turned around and went back to the tent for tea. When it was light, we slogged up to an ice line we had spotted on the hike in, which had never been ascended before. A couple of fun pitches of delicate climbing over thin ice and rock and then it was back to the town of Banff.
I had been playing hooky from the Banff Mountain Festival last month, the ostensible reason for which I had come to Canada. The Banff Festival, which started in 1975, is the biggest film and book festival devoted to the outdoors and those who play in it. Scores of films, readings and panel discussions fill a week at the Banff Centre, an arts institution in the heart of the Canadian Rockies.
I guess if you have to spend a day indoors you might as well watch films about the outdoors.
One of my favorites was "Wild Water," a gorgeously shot homage to kayaking. Boaters huck off huge waterfalls, paddle through violent rapids and talk movingly about why they do it.
"We're walking away from an unnatural civilized world, which has become normal, and we're walking back into the most dramatic and potentially dangerous parts of the natural world," said Doug Ammons, a legendary kayaker, best known for soloing the treacherous Stikine River in Canada. "Because it's risky, because it's dangerous, it means it's real. If it doesn't have any consequences it means it's not real."
A number of films dealt movingly with those consequences. "Point of No Return," for instance, chronicled Jonny Copp and Micah Dash (the latter whom I knew) and their attempt to make a first ascent on a peak in China. The weather turned out to be horrible and the route menaced by rock and ice fall. Accompanied by cameraman Wade Johnson, the duo decided to abandon the expedition and retrieve gear they had left at the base of the mountain. An avalanche killed all three.
"The problem is you don't know the limit until you go over it," said Ueli Steck in "The Swiss Machine." Footage of Mr. Steck setting the speed record for climbing the north face of the Eiger in 2:47 was just stunning.
Another movie, "Crossing the Ditch," followed two young men trying to become the first to kayak from Australia to New Zealand—shortly after a vastly more experienced paddler disappeared attempting the same journey. Numerous scenes showed the mothers of both men crying as their departure loomed.
"Don't call me mum ever again, if you go," one said.
The lads would spend 62 days at sea—battered by storms and stalked by sharks—before coming ashore to a hero's welcome in New Zealand.
"It's always going to be tough on the families," said kayaker Justin Jones. "But to not go out there is to deny our true nature."
The true nature of many of the athletes showcased in the festival will strike some as a little twisted. Leo Houlding, for example, parachuted into Baffin Island in the Arctic Circle, then spent weeks climbing an iced-up rock tower called Mount Asgard, only to leap from the top in a wingsuit. Yet for all the excitement in "The Asgard Project," it was the amazing scenery and colors of the northern lights that stole the show.
Mr Houlding looked like a little old lady from Pasadena compared to Jeb Corliss, the subject of "Daredevils: The Human Bird." Mr Corliss, who has BASE jumped off of everything from the Eiffel Tower to the Golden Gate Bridge, thought wingsuiting the Matterhorn—flying a few feet above a ridge the whole way—might make for a fun day. Mr. Corliss said that before he discovered BASE jumping he used to be suicidal. Some might question the past tense.
Ultimately, however, it was the splendor of nature that shone through again and again. In "Last Paradise," skiers and surfers tackled impossible- looking slopes and waves—but the essential point was less the action than the engagement with the natural world. "Tomorrow's protectors of the wilderness," said the film's narrator, "are the kids that play in it today."
Mr. Ybarra is the Journal's extreme sports correspondent.
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Au Lac Living-Vegan Foods is a restaurant nestled in a nondescript shopping center just west of Mile Square Park.
If you eat meat, you probably haven't heard of Au Lac, the oldest and most well-known raw-vegan restaurant in Orange County.
The Asian-fusion eatery opened in 1996 as a vegan alternative to the many meat-heavy Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants in the area.
Then, in 2001, Chef Ito showed up.
Ito taught owner Mai Nguyen that her food was good, but that it could be better, healthier. He taught her that there is only one race, the human race, and that raw-vegan or “humanese” cuisine is the best way for people to eat.
Nguyen, whose business was booming and was not used to people telling her that she was not doing things correctly, was intrigued.
But what she heard was Ito's energy: his message, not his voice. That would be impossible.
Ito hasn't spoken a word in more than 15 years.
A MAN OF NO WORDS AND NO MEAT
The first time I met Chef Ito, he shook my hand, gave me a hug, rubbed essential oils on my wrist and took my picture.
After more than 15 years without speaking, Ito has found other ways to communicate with people.
The second time I saw Ito, it was again at Au Lac.
This time, I was there to interview the owner, Mai Nguyen, about her enigmatic chef and her improbable recovery from a life-threatening brain tumor, which she attributes to a plant-based diet.
As I waited for Nguyen to arrive at my table, I watched Ito emerge from the kitchen and flit about the restaurant, passing out hugs and smiles like they were free dinner rolls.
After hugging one customer, Ito stood back and began to smile, nod and gesticulate elaborately.
Ito stopped having verbal conversations after taking a religious vow of silence more than 15 years ago, but that doesn't mean he has stopped communicating.
The customer asked him a question, and he answered by mouthing a one-word answer that he embellished with elaborate hand gestures.
When the woman responded, Ito leaned back into a cartoon-size smile and touched his nose in agreement.
“Sometimes body language is more important than words because words sometimes aren't true,” Au Lac regular Kleopatra Angelova of Redondo Beach said that night. “He gives me a special energy with just one hug.”
In the New Agey world of raw-veganism, where the souls of animals and the integrity of enzymes and antioxidants are sacrosanct, a silent chef is something of a unicorn.
Like the unicorn, Ito's disciples believe his cuisine cures illness – or, at the very least, results in beautiful skin, smooth bowel movements and a rockin' bod.
Reams of studies demonstrate the health advantages of a plant-based diet, but Ito offers more than physical nourishment.
“This is what we call a soul restaurant. Because you can see the soul and feel the love,” Angelova's date, Lawrence “LT” Smith, said.
Nguyen is not surprised by how taken her customers are with her chef. After all, people have greater respect for those who speak few words, she said.
“Talking is creating frictions. It's the reason that people argue,” she said. “It means he can be in tune with God 24 hours a day.”
Facial expressions, hand gestures and mouthed words usually are enough for Ito to get his point across with customers, coworkers and friends.
If these methods fail, he'll scribble a few words on a scrap of paper.
After a dozen years of working together, Nguyen has never heard Ito speak, she said, but she loves him like a brother – for his humility, for his dedication to “humanese” cuisine, for his kind, bottomless energy.
When Nguyen asked Ito whether he would ever speak again, he put pen to paper and wrote, “It's up to God.”
Chef Ito declined to be interviewed for this article, saying the story of humanese cuisine is more important than his personal story.
OWNER BELIEVES DIET HEALED HER
When Mai Nguyen moved from Memphis, Tenn., to Fountain Valley in 1990, her days were numbered.
Six times the doctors cut into her neck and skull, but the tumors they removed kept growing back, seemingly intent on leaving Nguyen's two small children without a mother.
Nguyen's condition, known as Cushing's disease, was proving too great a foe for Western medicine, so Nguyen – lying on what she thought would be her death bed – started looking elsewhere for a cure.
“Buddha says we should have love on the table. That means no meat,” said Nguyen, 58.
While Buddhist views on vegetarianism vary depending on the school, Nguyen always strove to eat less meat because of the Buddha's teachings. She also was influenced by John Robbins, son of the co-founder of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream franchise and author of the best-selling book “Diet for a New America,” which extols the health and environmental benefits of a plant-based diet.
Nguyen's husband, a medical doctor, was worried a meat-free diet would exacerbate her already weakened state. But his tune changed when he saw Nguyen's blood tests four months after she cut meat from her diet.
“His hand was shaking,” Nguyen remembers when her husband read the test results in 1992. “He said, ‘This is unbelievable. They've made a mistake.'”
Nguyen's cholesterol had dropped from 250 to 170. Her white and red blood cell counts were healthy. But most importantly, the brain tumor hadn't grown back.
It still hasn't.
Nguyen believes in the power of diet as a way to cure all manner of illness. Preparing food below 118 degrees means enzymes stay intact, which, raw-vegans believe, fortifies the immune system and protects against infection and disease.
But raw-veganism isn't only about health, Nguyen is quick to point out.
“If we want to convince people to eat healthily, we have to make the food tasty,” she says. “If it doesn't taste good, your body won't accept it in the long term.”
Contact the writer: 657-217-2328 or firstname.lastname@example.org
Contact the writer: email@example.com or 657-217-2328
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It does of course matter if the purpose of the statement is to prove that its subject can write or express him/herself verbally. As you say, this will vary from case to case.
Good point David. Expressing oneself through writing is an important skill, that everyone should have. It could also be that an artists statement written by someone other than the artist can't truely express the artists motivation behnd his work. That could be the key reason; to see if there is more to what the artist does than simply snapping the shutter.
It is that very photograph that should make me realize that there was more behind it than releasing the shutter by accident.
Yes, sometimes the photographer's story evokes a different impression. But that would be another story.
Am I too puritan?
I’m trying to get an international artists in residence project off the ground and am around artists’ studios weekly, which of course does not make me an expert nor less naïve… And I sometimes have hard times with curators, art scholars and gallery owners.
But I get the impression that the longer the more artists deliver a booklet explaining what they are doing. To me the pure work is decisive. This won’t stop me from asking the artist or reading those texts. But this all will deliver another story. Something second stage. And what about seeing some works of art just as something mysterious destined to stay unexplained?
If a non-writing artist wants to express himself literally then he should do so. And I am free to read that. I might even see this as an integral part of his work (thus still pure, I can put several labels on a drawer), or just as an explaining add-on.
Independent on how one approaches a work of art, if someone does not feel at ease expressing or explaining himself in writing, don’t force him.
When I am recruiting people (in geophysics, nothing to do with photography), I look at their applications for factual evidence of their abilities. A so-called personal statement is so much hot air otherwise. "I spent 6 months doing voluntary service work in Somalia" is a much stronger statement of personal values than "I want to help the needy".
Applying the same logic to an artist's statement, it seems to me that either the artist's work reflects his personal values clearly, in which case the statement is redundant, or it fails to and then the statement is also so much hot air.
So I'm with AgX - a coherent body of work demonstrates that the artist was not just snapping the shutter by accident.
I think artists statements, as a requirement, are total and complete bullshit -- an artificial imposition by critics and academics that artists must play on their (critics and academics) home turf of linguistics.
I say go ahead and have someone else write the statement. If enough people go that route, maybe statements (again, as a requirement) will be exposed as the joke they are and just go away.
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Around 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression. The World Health Organization reports that depression is the leading cause of disability. It is a serious clinical problem, and leading treatments, like Prozac and Paxil, can take weeks to months to work. There may be new hope for treating depression in the form of a popular “club drug” called Special K.
Dr. Dennis Charney, the Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the author of Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges, has been leading a team of researchers to find a faster, more effective treatment. Dr. Charney told Big Think: “Now some people know ketamine as a recreational drug of abuse called Special K, but we have found that it has potential for the treatment of depression that had not responded to traditional antidepressant treatments and that it works faster -- that it can work within several hours.”
Ketamine works very differently from available anti-depressants. Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft, for instance, block the reuptake of the neurotransmitter serotonin. Instead, ketamine works through the glutamate system. Research is still underway to understand how it effects the system. The initial results are promising.
For more on Dr. Charney’s insights into this revolutionary new depression treatment, watch a clip from Big Think’s interview:
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In many parts of the South, peaches have already begun hitting the farmers’ markets, and from now through September these sweet and juicy fruits will be the toast of the town, turning up in ice creams, cobblers, and pound cakes. A lot of work goes into producing what some consider to be the South’s favorite fruit—you simply can’t stick a tree or a peach seed in the ground and ignore it, expecting it to grow and yield baskets of perfect produce. Peach trees are extremely finicky, requiring good drainage, fertilization, and ideal climate conditions. And while you can’t do anything about Mother Nature, there are additional things to do that will help your trees produce good fruit. It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it, right? Whether your favorite peaches hail from Georgia, South Carolina, or your own backyard, we all agree that nothing tastes better on a hot summer day than a sweet dessert made from farm-fresh peaches.
They Like it Cold
For a good harvest, peach trees need some winter chilling; most selections require 600 to 900 hours of 45°F or lower temps during the dormant season. Only selections with a low winter chill, such as TropicSweet and La Feliciana, do well in the Coastal and Tropical South. An insufficient number of winter-chill hours means delayed leaf-out, a scanty crop, and eventual death of the tree. Early-blooming selections are also at risk if there is a late frost.
Then They Like it Hot
Peach trees require clear, hot weather during the growing season. If spring has been cool and rainy, peach trees will set few flowers, pollinate poorly, and get peach leaf curl.
They Require Heavy Pruning
Peach trees require heavier pruning than most other fruit trees. In each dormant season (that time of year when there are no outward signs of growth) cut off at least two-thirds of the previous year’s growth by removing two of every three branches formed that year. Even with heavy pruning, peach trees still have a habit of setting too much fruit. When fruits are about 1 inch wide, thin out some of the excess, leaving the remaining fruits 8 to 10 inches apart. If growth becomes weak and leaves turn yellowish, feed with nitrogen fertilizer.
They Are Plagued By Disease
Peach trees are pestered by numerous insects and diseases, so if you are truly opposed to spraying, you may want to reconsider growing this kind of fruit tree. During the dormant season farmers will typically administer a spray to prevent leaf curling. Later, as the weather slowly warms and the buds begin to open to reveal the pink flowers, it is time to apply fungicide to prevent brown rot. Later, as the fruit begins to grow and over half the pink petals have dropped from the tree, it is time for another application of fungicide to prevent brown rot at this stage. And later still, while the peaches grow they are susceptible to the plum curculio beetle. At this time, the tree will be sprayed with an insecticide for protection. Some insects attack a tree stressed by poor growing conditions or wounds. Always get rid of diseased plant parts and keep the ground free of rotten fruit.
The South is known for her delicious peaches. If you have specific problems with your peach trees, be sure and check with your local County Extension Agent for advice that is specific to your region.
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Following the prepertion of the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Africa 2014, which will take place at the CTICC from 10-12 September, Gartner – an information technology research and advisory company – estimates that by 2020, there will be 7.3 billion personal devices and 30 billion sensors in things ranging from jewellery to appliances. This is up from 1.6 billion personal devices and 0.9 billion sensors in 2009.
“The digital business is the coming together of possibilities in the physical and virtual worlds to create new business designs that can drive competitive advantage,” said Jeffrey Mann, Gartner research Vice President.
“As the Internet of Things and smart objects meet cloud, mobile, social and information, the IoT will create entirely new combinations of technology at accelerated speeds. This will disrupt existing business models, reshape entire industries and redefine the role of IT.”
Gartner projects that by 2020 the total economic value-add for the IoT will be US$1.9tn in this digital industrial economy.
Mann added that it’s not about using technology as an enabler, but as a source of innovation for what the business could do. “Businesses need to put technology at the heart of how they generate revenue, seize competitive advantage and produce value.”
This digitalisation will completely change business technology and information architecture, what it needs from vendors, and how it deals with cyber security and risk. It will also require every business leader to have digital leadership skills.
“Especially in South Africa there’s been a lot of emphasis on cutting budgets to the bone,” Mann said. “A lot of the decisions that were made to ‘do more with less’ can hurt digital business efforts if there isn’t enough flexibility to react to and take advantage of new opportunities.”
This article has been extracted from http://www.cbn.co.za, please click on this link to read the article in full http://www.cbn.co.za/component/k2/item/1925-gartner-says-businesses-need-to-build-digital-skills-for-new-era
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Computer-Aided Teaching of All Mathematics (CATAM)
Library Home || Full Table of Contents || Suggest a Link || Library Help
|University of Cambridge|
|The Computer-Aided Teaching of All Mathematics (CATAM) Computational Projects courses provide an education in solving mathematical problems using a computing environment. Emphasizing the development of mathematical skills rather than programming abilities, students learn to use basic computational techniques and software packages to solve interesting problems, many of which are analytically intractable. Read news, projects manuals, and more.|
|Resource Types:||Computers, Departments, Software|
|Math Ed Topics:||Computers|
The Math Forum is a research and educational enterprise of the Drexel University School of Education.
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RUSSIA PUMPS IT UP
Amid all the talk of Saudi/OPEC influence on the world oil price, one name was missing—that of Russia.
It is the biggest producer of crude oil, and is unfettered by quotas or limits. At a time of historically high prices, Russia is drilling and pumping and exporting and generally filling its boots.
There’s a dream scenario playing out in Moscow. One-hundred-dollar oil is funding the expensive business of pushing the exploration boundaries into the country’s frozen north. The Kremlin looks fondly upon the oil sector, which has replaced the gas business as President Vladimir Putin’s pet industry.
The behemoth is almost single-handedly keeping Russian production above 10 million barrels a day, Platts says. It is drilling at Vankor, a vast field in East Siberia that is a whole day’s flying time from Moscow and a place where temperatures can fall to minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
Also in Siberia is the Bazhenov shale, which is 80 times bigger than Bakken, covers an area the size of France and contains enough oil to double Russia’s reserves.
This means there is a need for new drilling rigs—Bloomberg reports that a potential shortage would represent a real danger to Russia’s production targets, and a squeeze on capacity means costs are going up.
So as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, consider dropping production to keep oil prices high, Russia just plows on, adding to the global oversupply situation noted by BP’s chief economist Christof Ruhl.
PIPELINE PLANNING IS A RISKY BUSINESS
A factor in expanding Russia’s East Siberian fields was the construction of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean export pipeline. Known as ESPO, the pipe was one of Russia’s largest engineering projects and has changed the face of regional oil supply.
It has taken more than a decade to become a fully operational service. Such are the time scales involved in planning such ambitious projects that there is always an element of risk about whether they will still be relevant by the time they are built.
Take natural-gas pipes. The companies developing the huge gas reserves in the Caspian Sea are about to decide which of two options they will use to get this gas to market, the Financial Times reports. Will it be Nabucco or will it be TAP? Whichever route is chosen it will be the beginning of the end for a process that began at the turn of the century.
Even after the decision, gas won’t start to flow until 2019. Is it worth the $40 billion cost? The FT has a map that shows all the different gas routes into Europe. There are five major pipelines in operation and five others being planned, all as regional demand is on the wane.
HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL IN SUDAN
The on-off-on-off saga of Sudanese crude oil has reached one of its “off” moments. Not long after the leaders of the two Sudans were planning a joint ceremony to mark the first exports since the end of hostilities, the crucial peace process is once more in peril.
But despite this, neither country can afford to lose the $35 million a day that, at current prices, the continued shut-out of 350,000 barrels a day is costing them. That two spot cargoes of Dar Blend, the local benchmark, were sold last week— the first deal of its kind in years—is a tiny triumph.
Brent crude oil made a run at a sustained breach of $105 a barrel in London Monday morning, but came up short as Chinese data proved an impassable hurdle. You can read the Journal’s markets report here.
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Prayed I then to the Lord my God, and made confession of my sins, in these words following: Mercy, mercy, Lord God, the great, the terrible; to those who love thee, so gracious, with those who keep thy commandments, troth keeping still! Sinned we have, and wronged thee, rebelled we have, and forsaken thee, turned our backs on decree and award of thine, nor heeded thy servants, the prophets, that spoke to us in thy name, to king and prince and the common folk that gendered us. Fault with thee is none; ours, Lord, to blush for the wrong-doing that has offended thee, men of Juda, citizens of Jerusalem, Israel near at hand, Israel banished far away, in what plight thou seest! Blush we, king and prince of ours, fathers of ours that did the wrong; be it thine, O Lord our God, to have mercy and to forgive. So far we have strayed from thee, so deaf to the divine voice, when the prophets that served thee bade us follow thy law! A whole people that would transgress thy command, turn a deaf ear to thy calls! What wonder if it fell on us, drop by drop, the avenging curse God’s servant Moses wrote of? Our sins had deserved it, and if yonder unexampled punishment befell Jerusalem, it was but a threat fulfilled; warning we had of it, we and the princes that governed us. No misfortune overtook us, but the law of Moses had foretold it; and yet, O Lord our God, appease thy anger we would not, nor leave our sinning, nor bethink ourselves, how well thy word thou keenest; what wonder if bane, not blessing, the divine regard brought us? Be our punishment what it will, not ours to find fault with the God we have disobeyed.
Thou art the Lord our God, whose constraining power rescued thy people from the land of Egypt, who hast won thyself glory, too, in this our day; we, Lord, have been sinners, we have shewn ourselves unworthy of all thy faithful dealings with us. But wilt thou let thy indignant anger fall on Jerusalem, on that holy mountain of thine? Too long, for our sins and the sins of our fathers before us, all our neighbours have held Jerusalem, and us thy people, in contempt. God of our race, give audience at last to the prayer, the plea thy servant brings before thee; for thy own honour, restore the sanctuary, that now lies forlorn, to the smile of thy favour. My God, give ear and listen to us; open thy eyes, and see how desolate is this city of ours, that claims to be thy own. No merits of ours, nothing but thy great love emboldens us to lay our prayers at thy feet. Thy hearing, Lord, and thy pardon; thy heed, Lord, and thy aid! For thy own honour, my God, deny thyself no longer to the city, the people that is called thy own!
— Daniel ix. 4-19.
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Monday, September 19, 2016
Hello Ferfal, read your first book. Fantastic! Mucho Gracias. Hope you and family are well and good.
Am reading some stuff by another author, Bonner. He writes, talking about the economic crisis in your country in 2001,
"Argentines found themselves using radically different new forms of money. And the interesting part is that they weren’t rare gems or coins. I'll tell you what their number one currency became, and it wasn't cash.
For example, this one small item you can buy at Walmart, or almost any department store, that during a crisis becomes an incredibly valuable currency for everyday goods. You may even have some in your home already."
What do you think of this? Hype or true? Asking you, what WAS your number 1 and 2 currency right after the big crisis in 2001?
What do you think he's talking about, the small item you can buy at Walmart?
Interesting stuff. He thinks the same Crash is coming to Amerika and you won't be able to get cash from the bank, etc.
I read your blogs all the time now. You can publish this if you like.
Thanks and be well, be safe.
Thanks for your email. I’m glad you enjoyed my book "The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse". In it I explain how things went down and what worked (and didn’t) when the economy collapsed in my country.
For those that haven’t read it, and answering your questions:
1)During and after the December 2001 Economic Collapse the currency was and still is the Argentine Peso. The only problem is that it devaluated greatly all of a sudden. Before the collapse, it was artificially pegged to the US dollar at a 1:1 rate. One peso, one dollar. Of course this was impossible to sustain and very hard on the national industry. After the collapse it quickly devaluated, first to 1.4, then 2 and finally 3 pesos for 1 USD in just a matter of days. This means that in a few days the national currency lost 2/3 of its value. Today, the exchange rate is about 1:15. Whats important to understand for the average Joe, is that during those first few days suffering a devaluation of nearly 70% it means that everything becomes 70% more expensive. Keep in mind that the national industry had been all but destroyed and replaced with imports, imports that had to be paid in USD… Try closing your eyes for a second and imagine what life would be like if everything was 3x more expensive, if you had to live with 1/3 of your current wage. How would you cope? Just imagining it for a few minutes will give you a headache. Actually going through it is a living nightmare.
2)In spite of the devaluation de Argentine Peso remained the official currency and by all means the one used the most. I’m not familiar with the author you mention but I just have to disagree with this part “Argentines found themselves using radically different new forms of money.” As I said, the Argentine Peso remained the official and most used currency. The only other currency used pretty often was the USD, which was of course highly regarded because it kept its value as the Peso lost it. If you had stashed say 10.000 USD before the devaluation, you still had 10.000 USD, which was now worth 30.000 Argentine Pesos, but if you had those same 10K in pesos you just lost a lot of money. As devaluation went on day after day, the USD became of course more highly regarded and sought after.
3)The only other form of “money” I can think of was the coupons used in barter clubs which I describe in my book. These were nothing more than cheaply printed notes to be used in the different barter clubs. They never came close to replacing the Peso as currency and were always only good within its own barter club, therefore of limited acceptance. You have to understand that unemployment was spiralling out of control. People had nothing, not even devaluated pesos. For someone that had nothing and was looking to trade a skill, service or good, the barter coupon offers some degree of hope, a way of procuring other needed goods or services. In spite of this, the peso was much preferred over coupons.
4) The Argentine Peso, the USD as a safe haven and as a last resort for unemployed, desperate people, coupons used in barter clubs. These where the only currencies used. Gold and silver did keep their value of course, but it was never used as an alternative currency even if having you savings out of the bank in precious metals would have been a life saver at the time. In all honesty having it in USD cash would have been the best choice, given that when selling PM you usually lose much more money given premiums, etc.
But let me makes this absolutely clear: There was no object, nothing you can buy in any Walmart that was ever used in Argentina as “currency” during that time. Not matches, lighters, canned food, none of the common barter fantasy stuff. If you had the crystal ball or the time machine what you did was go back in time, get your money out of the bank in USD cash. That was the ideal thing to do. If USA ever finds itself in such a situation, then naturally the USD would NOT be a safe haven therefore in that case you would travel in your time machine, get all your money out of the bank and buy precious metals before the USD collapses.
5) “What do you think he's talking about, the small item you can buy at Walmart?” I honestly don’t know. All I know is that no small item was used in place of the Peso or USD. Those two where the only forms of currency widely accepted, with the USD being the most prized one given the constant devaluation of the peso. No small item sold in Walmart was ever used as currency and most definitely not “incredibly valuable currency for everyday goods”. It does sound like one of those marketing gimmicks where you are given some cool guy tip that blows your mind if you buy whatever product is being sold or if you sign up for something, sometimes just to get your email. Again, no common use product was even close to being an alternative currency in any way in Argentina during that time and years after that.
My only advice in this regard is that if you want to prepare for an Argentine-like event in USA is to first have at least a months worth of expenses in cash, USD, and then have whatever you want to protect from devaluation in precious metals which simply wont be touched by the devaluation of the Federal Reserve notes.
Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”.
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Department of Pathology
About the Department
Pathology is a study of disease: its etiology, pathogenesis and pathophysiology, and its morphologic expression at organ, tissue, cellular and ultrastructural levels. The spectrum of research interests of our faculty includes basic molecular mechanisms of cell function and vertebrate development, as well as translational studies on disease mechanism, diagnosis and treatment. The pathologist works with each of the clinical specialties, using the tools of laboratory medicine to provide information essential to problem solving in clinical practice. As such, the pathologist is the “doctors’ doctor.”
Pathology is the only discipline that can be classified as both a basic and clinical science. As such, it provides for our medical students an indispensable bridge between the basic science and the clinical relevance and application of this information. Pathology provides a rich environment for graduate education in which our students can receive comprehensive training in as many areas of both the basic and clinical sciences as they relate to pathologic mechanisms.
The department provides diagnostic laboratory services for the LAC+USC Medical Center, Keck Hospital of USC and USC Norris Cancer Hospital and its clinical laboratories. Approximately 35 of the department’s full-time faculty members work in service laboratories throughout the LAC+USC Medical Center, where they are supported by 40 residents and fellows and a technical and clerical staff numbering 334. Keck Hospital of USC and USC Norris Cancer Hospital house 10 full-time pathologists, two fellows and approximately 124 clerical and technical staff.
Pathology faculty also provide services at our affiliate institutions: Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, one of the leading children’s hospitals in the country, and Rancho Los Amigos Hospital National Rehabilitation Center, a nationally-recognized rehabilitation hospital that was chosen by the federal government as a Regional Spinal Cord Injury Care System.
Keck School professors among 5 USC faculty named AAAS fellowsFive USC scientists have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their academic peers. AAAS, the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science, began the AAAS Fellows tradition in 1874. The nonprofit organization… Read More »
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Lawns can be quite a bit of work, if you allow them to be. I like to think that I have a nice looking lawn that adds value to my property. I do not like to spend endless hours manicuring, packing lawn cuttings, and spending heaps of money, Fertilizer, weed control, etc… to acquire the right look. Here is my recipe, I do not collect lawn cuttings, rather , I keep the “bag”, in the shed, and just mulch. The only thing about this process is that you must be vigilant about not allowing your lawn to get too tall, cutting every 5-6 days is a must.
Why does my lawn look so good without fertilizer? Every Fall once the leaves have fallen, I mulch the leaves until the pieces are very small, going over the area more than just a few times. I then take the extra leaves and place them around the base of my trees, and bushes, not extracting the large leaves from my flower garden spots. This allows nutrients to be absorbed into the soil, in addition to protect the plants base from harsh winters. It also protects insects and small animals to survive, along with Deer that will get by when their natural food is two feet under a blanket of snow. The trees benefit from the nutrients from the leaves, and protects the base and shallow roots from freezing.
The mulching begins before all the leaves have fallen, here is one of the local Deer ( ratface) standing in lines of simi mulched leaves.
One of the real benefits to just using mulch, is that it does not do harm to the Bee population, nor the birds that love to feed on the lawn, birds of many types come to feed , flickers, rock doves, grackles, sparrows, and of course robins. This year I had a returning robin who must dream of my lawn all winter, he showed up in the snow, in March, and I had to feed him Blueberries just to survive during this past harsh Spring.
The photo above is in the month of August, this is usually a month of brown lawns, mine as you can see is lush and healthy, natural, and good for the environment.
So, I hope you will try this method, lawns can be a real pain if you allow them to be , or they can add to the beauty of your neighborhood, and, be a sanctuary for the wildlife that a healthy lawn will attract , and sustain. Happy Mulching!
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Information can be deadly because it can easily be misunderstood and, in any case, can provoke resentment and anger. Thus, information that is not carefully managed can be a source of strife, undermining the peace of a community.
Because of its power, people may be tempted to use harmful information as a source of entertainment, treating it as a commodity which is traded for the pleasure of seeing how people react. Typically, such information consists of one person’s opinion of another, conveyed in words that are not always carefully chosen.
When a person is exposed to potentially hurtful information, he should treat it as confidential and reveal it only for a valid purpose, and only to those who can deal with it in the right way.
Mishlei tells us not to reveal such information to a gossipmonger who is likely to pass it on to a person who may be hurt by hearing it, or even to a third party who will put it into circulation so that the affected person will ultimately be hurt.
הוֹלֵךְ רָכִיל מְגַלֶּה סּוֹד וְנֶאֱמַן רוּחַ מְכַסֶּה דָבָר
(13) A gossipmonger reveals what should be a secret,
but a trustworthy person conceals a matter.
Mishlei advises us to recognize potential gossipmongers (pedlars of gossip) and avoid sharing sensitive information with them. The gossipmongers are contrasted with people who can be trusted to suppress information that might cause harm to others. Such trustworthy people of noble character are described as having a faithful spirit (ne’eman ruach).
(13) A gossipmonger — הוֹלֵךְ רָכִיל
is by nature untrustworthy and so he
reveals what should be a secret, — מְגַלֶּה סּוֹד
but a trustworthy person — וְנֶאֱמַן רוּחַ
conceals a sensitive matter. — מְכַסֶּה דָבָר
even when it is not formally designated as a secret
and even when he is not requested to keep it confidential.
(1) The gossipmonger is like a pedlar who travels about selling his wares. He offers information for sale and is repaid with information that he passes on to the next customer. (אבן עזרא)
(2) If you see a person who is eager to hear gossip you can be sure that he will reveal a secret. Therefore, you should not entrust him with your secrets, because he is not likely to respect them. (רבינו יונה)
(3) Even though there is already an explicit prohibition against gossipmongering in the Torah (Vayikra 19:16), Mishlei speaks strongly against this practice because it is harmful to civic peace. It destroys friendships and goodwill among people. Whether or not there is any truth to the gossip, the strife that it arouses can even lead to bloodshed. (המאירי)
(4). The essence of gossipmongering is revealing to someone that which another person has said about him. However, when one reveals this information to a third party he is also guilty of gossipmongering because once the rumor is out, it will in time come to the ears of the person affected. (מצודות)
THE TRUSTWORTHY PERSON
(5) A ruach ne’eman (faithful spirit) is one who can be trusted to maintain control over the information to which he is privy, revealing it only to those who are worthy. (הגר”א)
(6) A secret is like a valuable that is entrusted for safekeeping. A person should not entrust his valuables to anyone who is not trustworthy. ( מלבי”ם)
(7) A person who is made privy to sensitive information should not dwell upon it, but should try to forget it as soon as possible. (המאירי)
(8) The only people who respect the need for restricting access to sensitive information are those described as having a faithful spirit. They will keep it secret even when not requested to do so. (רבינו יונה)
NOTE: For a PDF copy of this segment, please click on the blue title below.
This will enable you to print out the entire text of the article.
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Necrotizing fasciitis, also known as Fournier's gangrene, is a severe and life-threatening genital flesh infection caused by certain diabetes drugs. Patients taking Type 2 diabetes drugs to lower their blood sugar experience the rare Fournier's gangrene far more commonly than the general public. Identified as a risk by the FDA in 2018, necrotizing fasciitis from 13 different diabetes drugs has led consumers to file product liability litigation lawsuits against drugmakers Eli Lilly / Boehringer Ingelheim, AstraZeneca, Merck, and Janssen / J&J. Attorneys handling diabetes drug infection lawsuits related to diabetes drugs believe persons and the family members of persons who have suffered from Fournier's gangrene may be eligible for significant compensation. This page provides a comprehensive look at necrotizing fasciitis from diabetes drugs.
It is a particular class of diabetes drugs causing necrotizing fasciitis, known as SGLT2 (sodium glucose cotransporter 2) inhibiting drugs. Prescribed to patients suffering from Type 2 diabetes, SGLT2 inhibitors lower the body's blood sugar by making the kidneys remove extra sugar through the urine. There are known risks associated with this drug class, but until recently the risk of severe genital infections from diabetes drugs was unknown. Fourteen medications fall in this class, and thirteen of these diabetes drugs are linked to necrotizing fasciitis:
Necrotizing fasciitis, also commonly known as Fournier's gangrene, is an extremely rare and severe bacterial infection of the genitals and surrounding tissues. Typically, only men are affected by this condition and the FDA has only recorded six cases in the past 30 years.
Necrotizing fasciitis begins when bacteria enter the skin through a cut or break in the tissues. The condition is described as “flesh eating†because any tissues the infection reaches become destroyed. Fournier's gangrene affects the tissues under the skin surrounding the muscles, nerves, fat, and blood vessels of the perineum.
Symptoms of necrotizing fasciitis include tenderness, redness and swelling of the genitals or perineal area, reaching from the genitals back to the rectum. Once infected, a patient with Fournier's gangrene can worsen rapidly. Persons experiencing symptoms of necrotizing fasciitis and suffering from general unwellness and a fever of 100.4 or greater should seek medical attention promptly. Once diagnosed, medical treatment involves a broad-spectrum antibiotic and surgery to cut out infected tissues.
Debridement surgery often leaves patients permanently disfigured. Necrotizing fasciitis may also prompt other life threatening conditions such as acute kidney injury, diabetic ketoacidosis, and septic shock, and may result in death.
The FDA Diabetes Drug Infection Warning was released in August of 2018, naming thirteen Type 2 diabetes drugs as culprits in a recent uptick in cases of Fournier's gangrene. Compared to six cases in thirty years, the FDA has recorded at least 12 cases in just five years, 2013-2018, all in patients taking diabetes drugs on the FDA's list. Where Fournier's gangrene typically affects only men, nearly half of the recent diabetes drug infection cases were women (5 women in 12 cases).
As a result of the FDA diabetes drug infection warning, drugmakers were required to include a Fournier's gangrene warning on diabetes drug labels. Manufacturers argue the drugs offer benefits that outweigh the risk of a flesh-eating genital infection; critics say Type 2 diabetics have other, safer means to control blood sugar levels. The market for SGLT2 inhibiting diabetes drugs is expected to reach $2 billion by 2020, and the four manufacturers implicated in the FDA diabetes drug infection warning have been in aggressive competition to secure market shares.
Our attorneys specialize in holding large corporations accountable when they've placed profits ahead of safety. Through settlements and winning verdicts, our attorneys have obtained millions for our clients. Let us help you today.
Filing a lawsuit will allow you to hold the pharmaceutical company accountable for damage it has caused you or a loved one, while also providing real compensation for your medical expenses, suffering and loss. Contact us today for a free consultation.
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In the last couple of weeks, I have had three people make comments suggesting that I explain the relationship between ‘ought’ and desire - including a line in a post by eenauk that he is not sure how I link my desires and my oughts.
Therefore, I shall see if I can clarify the issue.
Though I fear that I am cutting my own financial throat with respect to selling copies of that book I wrote. Why should anybody buy the book if I keep giving away all of its arguments?
Actually, I will start with ‘should’. ‘Ought’ is a species of ‘should’ and it is easier to understand the species by first understanding the genus.
Should and Reasons for Action
‘Should’ = ‘There are more and stronger reasons-for-action in favor of doing X than against doing X.’
‘Should’ is intimately related to reasons for action. If there are no reasons for action for doing something, then it makes no sense to say that it should be done. If there are more and stronger reasons against doing something, then it also makes no sense to say that it should be done. In order for it to be the case that something should be done, there has to be a reason for doing it.
Please note that, in writing this, I have ‘should’ on one side of the equation, and an ‘is’ statement on the other side. ‘Are’ is just the plural form of ‘is’. When David Hume made his famous assertion that one cannot derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’, he used the premise that ‘ought’ describes a different sort of relationship, and that one needs to explain the connection between this new type of relationship and ‘is’ relationships to make these inferences valid.
He was wrong. ‘Ought’ relationships are a specific type of ‘is’ relationships. They are ‘is’ relationships – relating actions to reasons for action. As such, there is no mystery in deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’, as long as we ‘is’ talking about a reason for action.
So, let’s get to these reasons for action.
Reasons for Action and Desires
Desires are the only reasons for action that exist.
’Should’ (when true) = ‘Is such as to fulfill more and stronger desires in question’.
In my younger days, as a contributor to the Internet Infidels Discussion Board, I said that this equation was true by definition.
I was wrong.
People have, throughout history, postulated the existence of reasons for action other than desires. They have postulated reasons built directly into the fabric of the universe – either by God, or intrinsic to the commands of God, or in nature itself, or in the form of some sort of supernatural property. These other reasons for action do not exist. However, if they did exist they would count as reasons why a certain action should or should not be performed. The word ‘should’ does not exclude them a priori.
As it turns out, desires are the only reasons for action that exist. It is not true by definition, but it is nonetheless true.
Because ‘should’ refers to reasons for action, and desires are the only reasons for action that exist, ‘should’ either refers to desires, or it refers to something that is not, in the real world, a reason for action. If it refers to a reason for action that does not exist, then the ‘should’ statement is false.
The Ambiguity of Should
Now, ‘should’ in this sense is an ambiguous term. It raises the question, “Which desires?”
The answer to this question has to be picked up in the context in which the ‘should’ statement appears.
If I were to say, “The keys are on the table,” this raises the question, “Which table?” In order to answer this question we have to look at the context in which the statement was made. Typically, when I use a phrase like ‘the table,’ I assume that the listener can pick up from the context which table I am talking about. If not, then I may have to be more specific (e.g., “the dining room table”).
When a speaker uses the term ‘should’, he usually uses it in a way where the listener can pick up the desires in question from the context in which the statement is used. If not, then the speaker may need to be more specific.
Example #1, two people are sitting in a car outside of a convenience store. The passenger pulls a gun, checks it for bullets, cocks it, stuffs it in his coat, and opens the car door as if to leave. The driver hands him a ski mask and says, “You should wear this.” In this example, the ‘desires in question’ in this case are the passenger’s desires, and not the desires of the store clerk or other customers.
Example #2: I meet a friend for lunch. She has no idea what to get her husband for his birthday. We discuss options for a while, and I say, “You should buy him a hot tub.” The person listening to the conversation would have heard my friend say how much she wants a hot tub but cannot afford one, in part because she wants to get something special for her husband. They would have heard her say that her husband has also talked about buying a hot tub as well, but was also worried about the expense. My recommendation, in this context, would take the form of fulfilling more and stronger of both of their desires.
Another friend complains about her job. I tell her that she should just tell her boss, “I quit,” and walk out. She knows that I am not serious because, even though this act would fulfill some of her desires, it would not fulfill the more and the stronger of her desires (e.g., the desire for food, clothing, and shelter).
It is important to note that these are clearly not moral statements. The robber does not have an obligation to wear the mask, my friend is under no obligation to purchase the hot tub, and my other friend has no duty to keep her job. These are all non-moral senses of the word ‘should’. So, we still need to look for what is special about moral senses of the word ‘should’.
But first, we have a complication.
Ought and Can
‘Should’ lives under a restriction that it implies ‘can’. For example, it is not the case that an agent should teleport a child out of a burning building unless the agent can teleport a child out of a burning building. It is not the case that he should fire his boss unless he can fire his boss.
However, at the moment of action, the only act that an agent can perform is the act that will fulfill the more and the stronger of the agent’s own desires, given his beliefs. In other words, the only act that an agent can perform is the act that an agent does perform.
Does this imply that an agent always should do only what he does?
Typically, when a person asks, “What should I do?” it is possible to interpret this as the question, “What would I do if my beliefs were true and complete?” We act so as to fulfill the more and stronger of our desires, given our beliefs. However, we seek to fulfill the more and stronger of our desires. When our beliefs are false or incomplete, there is a gap between these two that often causes an agent to do what she should not have done.
This does not change the fact that an agent can only act so as to fulfill the more and the stronger of her desires, given her beliefs. The agent, in asking, “What should I do?” is seeking a set of relevant and true beliefs (or a closer approximation to what is relevant and true) that would actually allow her to fulfill the more and stronger of her desires, when she acts so as to fulfill the more and stronger of her desires given her beliefs.
In addition to the gap between what an agent should do and will do caused by false and incomplete beliefs, there is a problem of future desires. Desires are not capable of backwards causation. Therefore, there is no way for a future desire to directly cause a present action. Whenever an agent acts, she acts so as to fulfill her current desires, given her beliefs. Future desires are left to fend for themselves.
It is still sensible to ask, “What should I do?” in a sense that considers future desires. The hypothetical question, “What would I do I had all true relevant beliefs and future desires had the power to influence present action,” is still a valid question, and an important question to answer for some people.
There are two ways that present actions can bring about the fulfillment of future desires. This is important, by the way, because I would estimate that a majority of the objections to what I write then I cover this subject comes from a failure to distinguish these three different relationships. People assume (wrongly) that I am talking about one of these relationships and raise all sorts of objections against that straw man, when in fact I talk almost exclusively about the other relationship.
So, let me cease to be cryptic and answer the question.
One way that a present act can fulfill future desires is if the agent simply has a desire to fulfill future desires. If I know that I will have an aversion to pain 10 years from now, and I have a present desire to avoid future pain, then I have a ‘reason for action’ for avoiding future states in which I will be in pain. If I know that I will want to eat 10 years from now, and that this will take money, my present desire to see that my future desires are fulfilled will cause me to save money.
The problem of drug addiction exists because future desires have no direct affect on present action. If a person has a particularly strong desire for nicotine, alcohol, or cocaine, for example, they will act so as to fulfill the more and stronger of their current desires, given their beliefs. Their future desires cannot mediate their actions. Therefore, they continue to use the drug, even though they know that their actions will thwart future desires.
The other relationship, and the relationship I always use when I talk about desire utilitarianism, is that a desire can be a desire that tends to fulfill future desires. This is not a desire to fulfill future desires. This is a desire for something else, where the pursuit of that “something else” tends to bring about future states of affairs that will fulfill future desires.
For example, a person can acquire a desire for exercise. She does not exercise because she will live longer. She exercises because she truly enjoys exercise. As a result, she is healthier, and her future desires stand a much greater chance of being fulfilled. Yet, the fulfillment of future desires is not what she is after when she exercises. It is, instead, a side effect.
We can see the difference between the person who exercises out of a desire for future health and a person who exercises for current enjoyment. Assume the news were to report that a comet will slam into the Earth in two months and end all life. The first person – the person who exercises for future health – no longer has a reason to exercise. He will stop. The second person – the person with a desire to exercise – still has a reason to exercise (her current desire to exercise), and will continue to do so, until the comet hits (unless other concerns force her to abandon her favorite past-time).
Now, we do, in fact, have the capacity to choose our desires. A person knows that cigarettes are designed to give the user a particularly strong desire to smoke cigarettes. That is to say, they are addictive. To prevent himself from acquiring a desire to smoke cigarettes, he refuses to smoke. This person is actually choosing a desire by knowing what causes the desire and choosing not to do that which would cause a desire he does not wish to have.
We also choose our current (or near-future) desires by deciding to acquire new habits. For example, a person may start to exercise out of a desire for future health. However, after she does this for a while, she discovers that she has come to value exercise for its own sake, and not for the sake of future health. She has acquired a new desire.
Because we have the capacity to modify our desires, we have reason to ask (and to answer) not only the question, “What should I do?” We also have reason to ask (and to answer) the question, “What should I want?”
Of course, the answer to the question, “What should I want?” has the same general answer as all other “Should” questions. “What reasons exist for and against my wanting X?” This is the same as asking, “Is it the case that wanting X would be such as to fulfill the desires in question?”
Other People’s Desires
Future desires have no capacity to directly influence current actions, or current desires. However, there is another set of desires out there that can have an effect on our current desires – the desires of other people.
The same two relationships that exist between current desires and future desires also exist between current desires and the desires of other people. I can have a desire to fulfill the desires of other people. Or (actually, ‘and’) I can have desires that tend to fulfill the desires of other people. My future self has no capacity to reach back in time and mold my present desires towards their fulfillment. However, other people can easily reach across space and affect my current desires. Furthermore, they have reason to do so. If they have a desire that Q, then they have reason to cause me to have those desires that will bring about or maintain a state of affairs in which Q is true.
So, in addition to my questions, “What should I do?” and “What should I want (given future desires)?” there is a question, “What should I want (given the desires of other people)?” Or, in other words, what desires do other people have reason to cause me to have? And, correspondingly, what desires do I have reason to cause other people to have? Of course, they have reason to cause me to desire that which will fulfill their desires, and I have reason to cause them to desire that which will tend to fulfill my desires.
There are, in short, desires that people generally have a lot of strong reasons to cause others to have, and desires that people generally have a lot of strong reasons to cause others not to have. If there are actions that one can perform (e.g., praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment) to cause people to have stronger desires that people have reason to strengthen, or to cause people to have weaker desires that people have reason to weaken, then there are reasons to perform those actions.
These posts tend to get very long, so I will end here.
However, I would like to note that nowhere in this essay did I use the word ‘moral’ – other than to make some distinctions near the introduction. I started off with a notion of practical ‘should’, and ended up talking about desires that people have reason to promote in others – in some cases, a lot of very strong reasons.
I will leave it up to the reader to decide if, at any point in this essay, any ‘should’ that I spoke about started to sound suspiciously like a moral ‘ought’.
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Winter 2010 | Volume 59, Issue 4
After Watson tweaked a transmitter reed, Bell invented the telephone
On a hot day in June 1875, 28-year-old Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, were toiling in adjacent workshops at 109 Court Street in Boston. Under sloped attic walls of rough-sawn wood, the two men hunched over benches covered with curled wires and jar-shaped batteries filled with acid. A few years before, an inventor named Joseph Stearns had made a fortune selling Western Union a device capable of sending two telegraphs simultaneously over one wire. Bell hoped to leapfrog that invention with a telegraph using different tones to transmit many messages at the same time.
After Watson plucked a reed to test the transmitter, Bell was surprised to hear a faint sound reproduced on the receiving device in his room. A former concert pianist, he instantly recognized the miracle that had occurred: the sound waves of a complex musical note had induced a current in the wire and reconstituted in the next room.
The idea of creating “an instrument by which the human voice might be telegraphed” first came to Bell the summer before, while he had been visiting his parents in Brantford, Ontario. While many others had conjured the notion of talking by wire, Bell had a theory that would ultimately make the idea work: “The vibrations of a permanent magnet will induce a vibrating current of electricity in the coils of an electromagnet,” he wrote in a letter to his parents on November 23, 1874. “Please keep this paper as a record of the conception of the idea.” Unlike the make-or-break contacts used in a telegraph, the telephone required a continuous current that could carry both tone and amplitude.
At that moment in Boston the following summer, Bell realized the reed had transmitted a musical note by means of an “induced” magnetic current. He quickly sketched a device with a membrane stretched over a U-shaped electromagnet, and Watson crafted the idea into a working model. When this “gallows” telephone was tested the following month, Bell recalled that “Mr. Watson came rushing down the stairs in a state of great excitement, saying, ‘Why, Mr. Bell, I heard your voice very distinctly, and could almost understand what you said.’” Although it was hardly a practicable invention yet, the two young men immediately understood the device’s potential.
Bell also knew he was in a tight race with Chicago inventor Elisha Gray to invent the multiple telegraph and possibly this new telephone idea. Although not a trained electrician, Bell had some advantages over Gray. A teacher of deaf children during the day and a tinkerer by night, he had learned a great deal about the physics of sound, the mechanisms of speech, and the physiology of the human ear—practical knowledge not possessed by most electrical engineers. He had even conducted experiments with a straw attached to the ear of a dead man, transmitting sound through the bone to inscribe waves on carbon-covered glass (the precursor of the phonograph, if he had chosen to pursue that line of investigation, as Edison later would).
The fellow boarders in Bell’s Boston rooming house thought the professor crazy with his notion of talking over wires, but throughout the fall and early winter he and Watson struggled to perfect the telephone. They continued to transmit “vocal sounds” but not intelligible speech. On February 14, 1876, Bell’s attorney filed for a U.S. patent. On that same day, Gray submitted a caveat (stating an intention to invent) for a telephone.
While much has been made of the coincidence, Bell’s prior conception and documentation of a year and a half of work would win the day. The Patent Office granted him Patent No. 174,465 for the “electric speaking telephone” on March 7, and three days later the device finally “spoke” with the famous uttered words, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” It was the most valuable single patent ever issued, opening a new age in information that would transform society with the speed and ease of communicating everything from business dealings to grocery purchases.
The growth of the tiny Bell company would not be easy. Western Union, one of the wealthiest corporations in America at the time, was soon selling thousands of telephones and had to be sued for infringement. David beat Goliath in that case, and Bell would win another 600 lawsuits over the telephone. But copper wire was prohibitively expensive, and, after shares were sold to raise money, Boston capitalists took over the company. While on a long honeymoon in England, Bell was laid off as the company’s chief electrician, the first person to be downsized by AT&T. But he would have a long and productive life, financed by selling his shares, and go on to many other inventions.
—Edwin S. Grosvenor is the Editor-in-Chief of American Heritage Magazine.
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Dr Thomas Stammers
Tom Stammers is a cultural historian of France in the long nineteenth century. His forthcoming book Collection, Recollection, Revolution: Scavenging the Past in Nineteenth-Century Paris explores the politics of collecting, the art market and cultural heritage in post-revolutionary France. His next major project concerns the experience of French dynasties in exile and the dispersion and recuperation of the royal patrimony. Tom is also editing a volume of essays on the art historian Francis Haskell's inquiries into nineteenth-century taste, arising from a conference he organized at St John's College, Oxford and the Ashmolean in 2015. Parallel research projects include connoisseurship in the nineteenth-century Louvre and the historiography of 1789 in interwar France. He is a regular contributor and feature writer for the arts magazine Apollo, and is co-curating a forthcoming exhibition at the Bowes Museum on 'The Allure of Napoleon'.
Tom is interested in a wide range of historiographical and theoretical controversies related to eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe.
- Aesthetics and Politics
- France, c.1750-1900
- Heritage and Historical Consciousness
- Museums and Collecting
- The Enlightenment and European Romanticism
- The French Revolutionary Tradition
- Urban History
Chapter in book
- 2016 'The Myth of the Belle Madeleine: street culture and celebrity in nineteenth-century Paris', in Calaresu, M. & Heuvel, Danielle van (eds.), Food Hawkers: Selling in the street from Antiquity to the Present, Routedge.
- 2014 'Scavenging rococo: Trouvailles, Bibelots and Counter-Revolutionary Politics', in Hyde, M. & Scott,K. (eds.), Rococo Echo: Art, History and Historiography from Cochin to Coppola, Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford, pp. 71-86
- 2013 'The Faubourg Saint-Antoine: Epicentre of Revolution?', in Milne, Anna-Louise (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Paris, Cambridge University Press, pp. 52-70
- 2008 'The Refuse of the Revolution: Autograph Collecting in France 1789-1860', in Armenteros,C., Blanning, T., DiVanna, I. & Dodds,D. (eds.), Historicising the French Revolution, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 39-63
- 2014 ''Catholics, Collectors and the Commune: Heritage as Counter-revolution in Paris, 1860-1809'', French Historical Studies 37:1, pp. 53-87
- 2008 'The Bric-à-Brac of the Old Regime: Collecting and Cultural History in post-revolutionary France', French History 22, pp. 295-315
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Maker Studio is a pop-up program located in Innovation Studios designed to give guests an opportunity to engage in hands-on making and STEAM based experiences in a small setting. The program is for guests ages 8 and up, and is included in exhibit admission.
July 12-13: Coding & Programming
Work with our Teen Tech interns on your coding and programming skills using Little Bits, MakeyMakey and Scratch.
July 19-20: Wood Burning
Learn how to carve wood with one of the oldest tools – fire (or heat). Make a wood burned creation to take home!
July 26-27: Stop Motion Animation
Guests will learn about stop motion animation and create their own stop motion movie to show off!
August 2-3: Mystery Maker Studio
Join us for a mystery maker studio planned by the Teen Tech summer interns!
August 9-10: Chain Reaction
Work together to build a chain reaction that will explore circuits, movement and physics! Chain reactions will be set off at 1 PM and 4 PM, so make sure you come beforehand to get your hands on the action.
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Tropics: A tropical wave several hundred miles southwest of the Cape Verde Islands as a medium 40 percent chance of becoming a tropical system over the next two days as it moves to the west – northwest at 10 mph. Some organization is possible before upper level winds become unfavorable for development later this week.
An elongated area of low pressure a few hundred miles southeast of Bermuda has a low, 20 percent chance of becoming a tropical cyclone during the next two days. Environmental conditions will only be marginally favorable for development as the system moves northward at 10 mph.
Today: Sunny and mild with low humidity. High: 78. Wind: North 5 - 10 mph.
Tonight: Mostly clear and cool. Low: 62. Wind: Northeast 5 - 10 mph.
Tomorrow: Mostly sunny and mild. High: 81. Wind: East 5 - 10 mph.
Discussion: High pressure and offshore flow will maintain the fall-like conditions today keeping humidity low as highs stay in the mid-70s to near 80. High pressure will begin shifting tonight allowing temperatures and humidity levels to moderate through the weekend. Lows will still be cool and trend in the 50s and 60s, but will increase to mainly 60s by Saturday. Highs will trend slightly upward as well with highs reaching the low to mid-80s Friday afternoon as humidity becomes more noticeable. Rain chances are low during the seven-day forecast period and not significant enough to mention but a stray shower is possible Wednesday and Thursday.
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Viewing 1 to 15 (of 44 total) records
A legal doctrine whereby those who take too long to assert a legal right, lose their entitlement to compensation. When you claim that a person's legal suit against you is not valid because of this, you would call it "estoppel by laches".
A land or building owner who has leased the land, the building or a part of the land or building, to another person.
A gift made in a will to a person who has died prior to the will-makers death.
An old English criminal and common law offence covering the unlawful or fraudulent removal of another's property without the owner's consent. The offence of theft now covers most cases of larceny. But larceny is wider than theft as it includes the taking of property of another person by whatever means (by theft, overtly , by fraud, by trickery, etc.) if an intent exists to convert that property to one's own use against the wishes of the owner.
All the rules of conduct that have been approved by the government and which are in force over a certain territory and which must be obeyed by all persons on that territory (eg. the "laws" of Australia). Violation of these rules could lead to government action such as imprisonment or fine, or private action such as a legal judgement against the offender obtained by the person injured by the action prohibited by law. Synonymous to act or statute although in common usage, "law" refers not only to legislation or statutes but also to the body of unwritten law in those states which recognize common law.
A printed legal form available for preparing documents.
In the United States, usually a law school student employed by a law firm to do research and other tasks. In the courts, a lawyer (or law school student) employed to do legal research.
An action or proceeding in a civil court; term used for a suit or action between two private parties in a court of law.
A person that has been trained in the law and that has been certified to give legal advice or to represent others in litigation. Also known as a "barrister & solictor" or an attorney.
A question which suggests an answer; usually answerable by "yes" or "no". For example: "Did you see David at 3 p.m.?" These are forbidden to ensure that the witness is not coached by their lawyer through his or her testimony. The proper form would be: "At what time did you see David?" Leading questions are only acceptable in cross-examination or where a witness is declared hostile.
A special kind of contract between a property owner and a person wanting temporary enjoyment and use of the property, in exchange for rent paid to the property owner. Where the property is land, a building, or parts of either, the property owner is called a landlord and the person that contracts to receive the temporary enjoyment and use is called a tenant.
Real property held under a lease.
Professional legal services available usually to persons or organizations unable to afford such services.
A child custody decision which entails the right to make, or participate in, the significant decisions affecting a child's health and welfare (compare with physical custody and joint custody).
A formal paper that is legally valid; something issuing from the court, usually a command such as a writ or mandate.
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